“The ideological and artistic originality of the comedy D. An essay on the theme of the ideological and artistic originality of the comedy D

The role of Fonvizin as a playwright and author of satirical essays in the development of Russian literature is enormous, just like the fruitful influence he had on many Russian writers, not only of the XVIII, but also of the first half of XIX centuries. Not only the political progressiveness of Fonvizin's work, but also his artistic progressiveness determined the deep respect and interest in him that Pushkin quite clearly showed.

Elements of realism arose in Russian literature of the 1770s-1790s simultaneously in its various sections and different ways. Such was the main trend in the development of the Russian aesthetic worldview of that time, which prepared - at the first stage - its future Pushkin stage. But Fonvizin did more in this direction than others, if not to talk about Radishchev, who came after him and not without dependence on his creative discoveries, because it was Fonvizin who first raised the question of realism as a principle, as a system of understanding man and society.

On the other hand, realistic moments in the work of Fonvizin were most often limited to his satirical task. It was precisely the negative phenomena of reality that he was able to understand in a realistic way, and this narrowed not only the scope of the topics embodied by him in a new manner discovered by him, but also narrowed the very principledness of his posing the question. In this regard, Fonvizin is included in the tradition of the "satirical direction", as Belinsky called it, which is a characteristic phenomenon of precisely Russian literature XVIII centuries. This direction is peculiar and almost earlier than it could be in the West, prepared the formation of a style critical realism. By itself, it grew in the depths of Russian classicism; it was associated with the specific forms that classicism acquired in Russia; it eventually exploded the principles of classicism, but its origin from it is obvious.

Fonvizin grew up as a writer in literary environment Russian noble classicism of the 1760s, in the school of Sumarokov and Kheraskov. Throughout his life, his artistic thinking retained a clear imprint of the influence of this school. The rationalistic understanding of the world, characteristic of classicism, is strongly reflected in the work of Fonvizin. And for him, a person is most often not so much a specific individuality as a unit in social classification, and for him, a political dreamer, the public, the state can completely absorb the personal in the image of a person. The high pathos of social duty, subordinating in the mind of the writer interests to the “too human” in a person, and Fonvizin forced him to see in his hero a scheme of civic virtues and vices; because he, like other classics, understood the state itself and the very duty to the state not historically, but mechanically, to the extent of the metaphysical limitations of the Enlightenment worldview of the 18th century in general. Hence, Fonvizin was characterized by the great virtues of the classicism of his century: and clarity, clarity of analysis of man as a general social concept, and the scientific nature of this analysis at the level of the scientific achievements of his time, and social principle evaluation of human actions and moral categories. But Fonvizin was also characterized by the inevitable shortcomings of classicism: the schematism of abstract classifications of people and moral categories, the mechanistic idea of a person as a conglomerate of abstractly conceivable "abilities", the mechanistic and abstract nature of the very idea of the state as the norm of social life.

In Fonvizin, many characters are built not according to the law of an individual character, but according to a predetermined and limited scheme of moral and social norms. We see the quarrel, and only the quarrel of the Counsellor; gallomaniac Ivanushka, - and the whole composition of his role is built on one or two notes; martinet Brigadier, but, apart from martial arts, there is little in him characteristic features. Such is the method of classicism - to show not living people, but individual vices or feelings, to show not life, but a scheme of social relationships. Characters in comedies, in satirical essays by Fonvizin are schematized. The very tradition of calling them "meaningful" names grows on the basis of a method that reduces the content of a character's characteristic mainly to the very trait that is fixed by his name. The bribe-taker Vzyatkin appears, the fool Slaboumov, the “Khalda” Khaldin, the tomboy Sorvantsov, the truth-seeker Pravdin, etc. At the same time, the task of the artist is not so much the depiction of individual people as the depiction of social relations, and this task could and was performed brilliantly by Fonvizin. Social relations, understood in relation to the ideal norm of the state, determined the content of a person only by the criteria of this norm. The subjectively noble nature of the norm of state life, built by the Sumarokov-Panin school, also determined a feature characteristic of Russian classicism: it organically divides all people into nobles and "others." The characteristics of the nobles include signs of their abilities, moral inclinations, feelings, etc. - Pravdin or Skotinin, Milon or Prostakov, Dobrolyubov or Durykin; such is the differentiation of their characteristics in the text of the respective works. On the contrary, the “other”, “non-noble” are characterized primarily by their profession, estate, place in the system of society - Kuteikin, Tsyfirkin, Tsezurkin, etc. Nobles for this system of thought are still people par excellence; or - for Fonvizin - vice versa: the best people should be nobles, and the Durykins are nobles only in name; the rest act as carriers of common features of their social belonging, evaluated positively or negatively depending on the relationship of the given social category to the political concept of Fonvizin, or Sumarokov, Kheraskov, etc.

For a classicist writer, the very attitude to tradition, to settled roles-masks is typical. literary work, to habitual and constantly repeating stylistic formulas, which represent the settled collective experience of mankind (characteristic here is the author’s anti-individualistic attitude towards creative process). And Fonvizin freely operates with such ready-made formulas and masks given to him by a ready-made tradition. Dobrolyubov in "The Brigadier" repeats Sumarokov's ideal love comedies, the clerk's adviser came to Fonvizin from satirical articles and comedies of the same Sumarokov, just as the petitress-Counselor had already figured in plays and articles before Fonvizin's comedy. Fonvizin, within his classical method, does not look for new individual themes. The world seems to him long ago dissected, decomposed into typical features, society - a classified “reason”, predetermined assessments and frozen configurations of “abilities” and social masks. The very genres have stood their ground, prescribed by rules and demonstrated by examples. A satirical article, a comedy, a solemn laudatory speech of a high style (Fonvizin has "A word for Paul's recovery"), etc. - everything is unshakable and does not require the invention of the author, his task in this direction is to inform Russian literature best achievements world literature; this task of enriching Russian culture was solved more successfully by Fonvizin, because he understood and felt specific features Russian culture itself, which refracted in its own way what came from the West.

Seeing in a person not a personality, but a unit of the social or moral scheme of society, Fonvizin, in his classical manner, is antipsychological in an individual sense. He writes an obituary-biography of his teacher and friend Nikita Panin; in this article there is a hot political thought, the rise of political pathos; there is also a track record of the hero in it, there is also a civil glorification of him; but there is no person, personality, environment in it, in the end - a biography. This is a "life", a scheme ideal life, not a saint, of course, but a politician, as Fonvizin understood him. Fonvizin's anti-psychological manner is even more noticeable in his memoirs. They are titled "A sincere confession in my deeds and thoughts", but there is almost no disclosure of the inner life in these memoirs. Meanwhile, Fonvizin himself puts his memoirs in connection with Rousseau's "Confession", although he immediately characteristically contrasts his intention with the intention of the latter. In his memoirs, Fonvizin is a brilliant writer of everyday life and a satirist, first of all; the individualistic autodiscovery brilliantly resolved by Rousseau's book is alien to him. Memoirs in his hands turn into a series of moralizing sketches such as satirical letters-articles of journalism of the 1760s-1780s. At the same time, they give an exceptional picture in terms of the richness of witty details. social life in its negative manifestations, and this is their great merit. The people of Fonvizin-classic are static. Brigadier, Counselor, Ivanushka, Julitta (in the early "Undergrowth"), etc. - all of them are given from the very beginning and do not develop in the process of the movement of the work. In the first act of The Brigadier, in the exposition, the characters themselves directly and unequivocally determine all the traits of their schema-characters, and later on we see only comic combinations and clashes of the same traits, and these clashes are not reflected in the internal structure of each role. Then the verbal definition of masks is characteristic of Fonvizin. The soldier's speech of the Brigadier, the clerk's speech of the Counselor, the petimeter speech of Ivanushka, in essence, exhaust the characterization. With the deduction of speech characteristics, there are no other individual human traits. And they all make jokes: fools and smart ones, evil and kind, because the heroes of The Brigadier are still the heroes of a classic comedy, and everything in it should be funny and “intricate”, and Boileau himself demanded from the author of the comedy “that he words were everywhere abounding in witticisms" (" poetic art"). It was a strong, powerful system of artistic thinking, which gave a significant aesthetic effect in its specific forms and superbly realized not only in The Brigadier, but also in Fonvizin's satirical articles.

Fonvizin remains a classic in a genre that flourished in a different, pre-romantic literary and ideological environment, in artistic memoirs. He adheres to the external canons of classicism in his comedies. They basically follow the rules of the school. Fonvizin is most often alien and interested in the plot side of the work.

In Fonvizin, in a number of works: in the early "Undergrowth", in "The Choice of a Tutor" and in "The Brigadier", in the story "Calisthenes" the plot is only a frame, more or less conditional. The Brigadier, for example, is constructed as a series of comic scenes, and above all a series of declarations of love: Ivanushka and the Counsellor, the Counselor and the Brigadier, the Brigadier and the Counsellor, and all these pairs are opposed not so much in the movement of the plot, but in the plane of schematic contrast, a pair of exemplary lovers: Dobrolyubov and Sophia. There is almost no action in comedy; "The Brigadier" is very reminiscent in terms of construction of Sumarokov's farces with a gallery of comic characters.

However, even the most convinced, most zealous classicist in Russian noble literature, Sumarokov, it was difficult, perhaps even impossible, not to see at all and not to depict the specific features of reality, to remain only in the world created by reason and the laws of abstract art. First of all, dissatisfaction with the real, real world obliged us to leave this world. For the Russian noble classicist, the concrete individual reality of social reality, which is so different from the ideal norm, is evil; it invades, as a deviation from this norm, the world of the rationalistic ideal; it cannot be framed in reasonable, abstract forms. But it exists - both Sumarokov and Fonvizin know this. Society lives an abnormal, "irrational" life. This has to be dealt with and fought. positive developments in public life both for Sumarokov and Fonvizin they are normal and reasonable. Negative ones fall out of the scheme and appear in all their individuality, painful for a classicist. Hence, in the satirical genres, as early as Sumarokov, in Russian classicism, the desire is born to show the concrete-real features of reality. Thus, in Russian classicism, the reality of the concrete life fact emerged as satirical theme, with a sign of a certain, condemning author's attitude.

Fonvizin's position on this issue is more complicated. The intensity of the political struggle pushed him to take more radical steps in relation to the perception and depiction of reality, hostile to him, surrounding him from all sides, threatening his entire worldview. The struggle activated his vital vigilance. He raises the question of the social activity of a citizen writer, of the impact on life, more acute than noble writers before him could do. “In the court of the king, whose autocracy is not limited by anything ... can the truth be freely expressed? "- writes Fonvizin in the story" Calisthenes ". And here is the task before him - to explain the truth. A new ideal of a writer-fighter arises, very reminiscent of the ideal of a leading figure in literature and journalism of the Western enlightenment movement. Fonvizin approaches the bourgeois-progressive thought of the West on the basis of his liberalism, rejection of tyranny and slavery, and the struggle for his social ideal.

Why is there almost no culture of eloquence in Russia, - Fonvizin poses the question in "Friend honest people"and answers that this does not come from the lack of national talent, which is capable of everything great, lower from the lack of the Russian language, whose richness and beauty are convenient for any expression," but from the lack of freedom, the lack of social life, preventing citizens from participating in political life of the country. Art and political activity are closely related to each other. For Fonvizin, the writer is "the guardian of the common good", "a useful adviser to the sovereign, and sometimes the savior of his fellow citizens and the fatherland."

In the early 1760s, in his youth, Fonvizin was fascinated by the ideas of the bourgeois-radical thinkers of France. In 1764, he remade Gresse's Sydney, not quite a comedy, but not a tragedy either, into Russian, a play similar in type to the psychological dramas of eighteenth-century bourgeois literature. in France. In 1769, an English story was published, "Sidney and Scilly, or beneficence and gratitude", translated by Fonvizin from Arno. This - sentimental work, virtuous, sublime, but built on new principles individual analysis. Fonvizin is looking for rapprochement with the bourgeois French literature. The struggle with the reaction pushes him onto the path of interest in advanced Western thought. And in his literary work, Fonvizin could not be only a follower of classicism.

The poster itself explains the characters.
P. A. Vyazemsky about the comedy "Undergrowth"

Truly public comedy.
N. V. Gogop about the comedy "Undergrowth"

The first appearance of the comedy "Undergrowth" on theater stage in 1872, according to contemporaries, caused, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, "throwing purses" - the audience threw purses filled with gold pieces onto the stage, such was their admiration for what they saw.

Before D. I. Fonvizin, the public almost did not know Russian comedy. The first public theater, organized by Peter I, staged Moliere's plays, and the appearance of Russian comedy is associated with the name of A.P. Sumarokov. “The property of comedy is to correct temper with a mockery” - Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin embodied these words of A.P. Sumarokov in his plays.

What caused such a violent reaction from the audience? The liveliness of the characters, especially the negative ones, their figurative speech, the author's humor, so close to folk, the theme of the play is a satire on the principles of life and education of landlord offspring, denunciation of serfdom.

Fonvizin departs from one of the golden rules of classical comedy: observing the unity of place and time, he omits the unity of action. In the play, there is actually no plot development; it consists of conversations between negative and positive characters. This is the influence modern author European comedy, here he goes further than Sumarokov. " french comedy absolutely good ... There are great actors in comedy ... when you look at them, then, of course, you forget that they are playing a comedy, but it seems that you see a direct story, ”Fonvizin writes to his sister, traveling through France. But Fonvizin can by no means be called an imitator. His plays are filled with a truly Russian spirit, written in a truly Russian language.

It was from the “Undergrowth” that I. A. Krylov’s fable “Trishkin’s caftan” grew, it was from the speeches of the heroes of the play that the aphorisms “mother’s son”, “I don’t want to study, I want to get married”, “fearing the abyss of wisdom” came out ...

main idea plays - to show the fruits of bad education, or even its absence, and it grows into a frightening picture of wild landowner malevolence. Contrasting "evil characters" taken from reality, presenting them in a funny way, Fonvizin puts the author's comments into his mouth goodies, extraordinarily virtuous individuals. As if not hoping that the reader himself will figure out who is bad and what is bad, the writer leading role assigns goodies.

“True - Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sophia are not so much living faces as moralistic dummies; but even their actual originals were no more lively than their dramatic shots... They were walking, but still lifeless schemes of a new good morality...

Time was needed, intensified and experiments, to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations, ”wrote the historian V. O. Klyuchevsky about the comedy.
Negative characters appear completely alive before the viewer. And this is the main artistic merit of the play, Fonvizin's luck. Like the goodies, the bad ones wear talking names, and the surname "Skotinin" grows to a full-fledged artistic image. In the very first act, Skotinin is naively surprised at his special love for pigs: “I love pigs, sister; and we have such large pigs in the neighborhood that there is not a single one of them that, standing on its hind legs, would not be taller than each of us with a whole head. The author's mockery is all the more powerful because it is put into the mouth of the hero we are laughing at. It turns out that love for pigs is a family trait.

“Prostakov. It's strange, brother, how relatives can resemble relatives! Our Mitrofanushka is all like an uncle - and he has grown up to pigs as much a hunter as you are. As he was still three years old, so, when he saw a pig, he would tremble with joy. .

Skotinin. This is truly a curiosity! Well, let, brother, Mitrofan loves pigs because he is my nephew. There is some similarity here: but why am I so addicted to pigs?

Prostakov. And there are some similarities. That's how I talk."

The same motif is played up by the author in the replicas of other characters. In the fourth act, in response to Skotinin's words that his family is "great and ancient," Pravdin ironically remarks: "That way you will assure us that he is older than Adam." Unsuspecting Skotinin falls into a trap, readily confirming this: “What do you think? At least a little ... ", and Starodum interrupts him:" That is, your ancestor was created even on the sixth day, but a little earlier than Adam. Starodum directly refers to the Bible - on the sixth day, God first created animals, then man. The comparison of caring for pigs with caring for a wife, sounding from the lips of the same Skotinin, evokes Milon's indignant remark: "What a bestial comparison!" Kuteikin, the cunning churchman, invests author's description in the mouth of Mitrofanushka himself, forcing him to read according to the hour book: "I am cattle, and not a man, a reproach to people." The representatives of the Skotinins themselves, with comical innocence, repeat about their "bestial" nature.

"Prostakov. After all, I am the father of the Skotinins. The deceased father married the deceased mother; she was nicknamed the Priplodins. They had eighteen of us children…” Skotinin speaks about his sister in the same terms as about his “cute pigs”: “To be honest, one litter; Yes, you see how she squealed ... ”Prostakova herself likens her love for her son to the affection of a dog for her puppies, and says about herself:“ I, brother, will not bark with you, ”Ah, I’m a dog’s daughter! What have I done!". The peculiarity of the play "Undergrowth" is also that each of the characters speaks his own language. This was duly appreciated by Fonvizin's contemporaries: "everyone is different in his character sayings."

The speech of the retired soldier Tsyfirkin is full of military terms, the speech of Kuteikin is built on Church Slavonic turns, the speech of Vralman, a Russian German, obsequious with the owners and arrogant with the servants, is filled with aptly grasped peculiarities of pronunciation.

The bright typicality of the heroes of the play - Prostakov, Mitrofanushka, Skotinin - goes far beyond its limits in time and space. And in A. S. Pushkin in "Eugene Onegin", and in M. Yu. Lermontov in "The Tambov Treasurer", and in M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in "Lords of Tashkent" we find mention of them, still alive and bearing the essence of the feudal lords, so talentedly revealed by Fonvizin.

A comedy by D. I. Fonvizin, in which, while maintaining a theatrical and conditional plot conflict, the everyday life of middle-class landlords, busy caring for their own prosperity, was depicted, the artistic content of which consisted in a new display of life on the stage, and namely Russian provincial, landowner life, and a new showing a person with more complex psychological characteristics and in more clarified specific social conditions, had big influence on the subsequent development of the comedy genre.

The artistic method of "Undergrowth" by D. I. Fonvizin is defined as early Russian realism of the Enlightenment, which relies on existing literary traditions (classic), uses artistic techniques and visual means of previous literary trends, but updates them, subordinating them to his creative task.

Externally, comedy is built on traditional motif matchmaking and the emerging fight of suitors for the heroine. It respects all three unities - action, time, place. The action takes place in the village of Prostakova during the day. By the beginning of the events in the house of Prostakova, the fate of the heroes was determined as follows. Sophia and Milon love each other. They are familiar from St. Petersburg. Uncle Milon - Cheston favorably treated the love of young people. On business, Milon leaves with his team in one of the provinces. During his absence, Sophia's mother dies. A young girl was taken away by a distant relative to the village. Here, after some time, the events that are narrated in the comedy unfold. They are already the final stage and fit into the day.

Prostakova decides to marry her poor relative Sophia to her brother, believing that Sophia as a bride is of no personal interest to her. Starodum's letter, from which everyone learns that she is a rich heiress, changes Prostakova's plans. There is a conflict between her and her brother.

The third "seeker" appears - Milo. Prostakova decides to put her foot down and organizes the kidnapping of Sophia. From a very dramatic end of the matchmaking, Sophia is saved by the intervention of Milon, who beats his bride from the "people" of Prostakova. This scene prepares the denouement. comic heroes confounded, vice punished: the comedy has a moralizing ending. Prostakova was deprived of her rights over the peasants for the abuse of her power, her estate was taken under guardianship.

Thus, Skotinin’s courtship, receiving Starodum’s letter, the decision to marry Sofya Mitrofan, the attempt to kidnap Sophia, Prostakova’s intention to deal with the courtyards, sort them out “one by one” and find out “who let her out of her hands”, finally, Pravdin’s announcement of a decree on taking Prostakova's houses and villages under guardianship are the key, central situations of the comedy.

In connection with the main theme of the comedy, the structure of "Undergrowth" includes scenes and persons that are not directly related to the development of the plot, but in one way or another connected with the content of the comedy. Some of them are filled with true comedy. These are scenes with Mitrofan trying on a new dress and a discussion of Trishka's work, Mitrofan's lessons, a quarrel between a sister and brother ending in a “brawl”, a quarrel between teachers, a comic dialogue during Mitrofan's exam. All of them create an idea of household, Everyday life of an uncultured landlord family, the level of its demands, intra-family relations, convince the viewer of the plausibility and vitality of what is happening on the stage.

Other scenes are in a different style. These are the dialogues of positive characters - Starodum, Pravdin, Milon, Starodum and Sophia, echoing in their content with the dialogues of tragic heroes. In them we are talking about an enlightened monarch, about the appointment of a nobleman, about marriage and family, about the upbringing of young nobles, about “that it is illegal to oppress your own kind with slavery.” These speeches, in fact, are a presentation of the positive program of D. I. Fonvizin.

The action in comedy unites all the characters and at the same time divides them into. malevolent and virtuous. The first, as it were, are concentrated around Prostakova, the second - around Starodum. This also applies secondary characters: teachers and servants. The nature of the characters' participation in the events is not the same. According to the degree of activity among negative characters Prostakova is rightly put in the first place, then Skotinin, Mitrofan. Prostakov essentially does not participate in the struggle. Of the positive characters, Sophia is passive. As for the rest, their participation in events is manifested at the most decisive moments; announces his "will" to suitors Starodum, predetermining the denouement; saves with weapons in the hands of his bride from the kidnappers Milon; announces a government decree on the guardianship of Pravdin.

It should be noted that, while maintaining the classic tradition, D. I. Fonvizin gives the heroes of the comedy telling names and surnames. This corresponds to the single-line character of the characters, in whose characters there is a certain dominant. New in the depiction of heroes were individual biographical factors in the formation of characters (Prostakov and Prostakov) - the presence of bright speech characteristics heroes, the reflection in the comedy of the complexity of characters capable of self-development (images of Mitrofan, Prostakova, Eremeevna).

The difference between heroes is not limited to their moral qualities. The introduction of extra-plot scenes into the comedy expanded and deepened its content, determined the presence of other, deeper grounds for opposing the nobles depicted in it. In accordance with this, there are two outcomes in the comedy. One concerns the relationship between Mitrofan, Skotinin, Milon and Sophia, whose fate was determined, on the one hand, by Prostakova, and on the other, by Starodum; the second refers to the fate of Prostakova as a malevolent landowner and a bad mother. In the events of this denouement, social and moral ideals author, the ideological and ethical orientation of the comedy as a whole is determined.

P. A. Vyazemsky, From the book “Fonvizin”
In the comedy "Undergrowth" the author already had a most important goal: the disastrous fruits of ignorance, bad upbringing and abuses of domestic power were exposed by him with a bold hand and painted with the most hated colors ... In "Undergrowth" he no longer jokes, does not laugh, but is indignant at the vice and stigmatizes it without mercy: even if he amuses the audience with a picture of abuses and foolishness, then even then the laughter inspired by them does not entertain from deeper and more deplorable impressions ...
The ignorance in which Mitrofanushka grew up, and the examples at home were to prepare a monster in him, what is his mother, Prostakova ... All the scenes in which Prostakova appears are full of life and fidelity, because her character is sustained to the end with unrelenting art, with unchanging truth. A mixture of arrogance and baseness, cowardice and malice, vile inhumanity towards everyone and tenderness, equally vile, to the son, for all that ignorance, from which, as from a muddy source, all these properties flow, are coordinated in her character by a sharp-witted and observant painter.
The success of the comedy "Undergrowth"

was resolute. Its moral action is undeniable. Some of the names actors became common nouns and are still used in popular circulation. There is so much reality in this comedy that provincial traditions even now name several persons who allegedly served as originals for the author.
N. V. Gogol, From the article “What, finally, is the essence of Russian poetry and what is its peculiarity”
Fonvizin's comedy strikes at the coarse brutality of man, which has come from a long, insensitive, unshakable stagnation in the remote corners and backwoods of Russia. She exhibited such a terrifying bark of coarseness that one hardly recognizes a Russian person in her. Who can recognize anything Russian in this evil creature full of tyranny, what is Prostakova, the tormentor of the peasants, her husband and everything except her son ... This crazy love for her offspring is our strong Russian love, which in a person who has lost his dignity, expressed itself in such a perverted form, in such a wonderful combination with tyranny, so that the more she loves her child, the more she hates everything that is not her child. Then the character of Skotinin is another type of roughness. His clumsy nature, not receiving any strong and violent passions to its share, turned into some kind of calmer, in its own way artistic love for cattle, instead of a person: pigs became for him the same as for an art lover Art Gallery. Then Prostakova's husband - an unfortunate, murdered creature, in which even those weak forces that held on were clogged with his wife's prodding - a complete dulling of everything! Finally, Mitrofan himself, who, having nothing malicious in his nature, having no desire to cause misfortune to anyone, becomes insensitive, with the help of pleasing and self-indulgence, a tyrant of everyone, and most of all of those who love him most, that is, mothers. and nannies, so that insulting them has already become a pleasure for him.
V. O. Klyuchevsky, From the article “Undergrowth” by Fonvizin (An attempt at a historical explanation of an educational play)
... In comedy there is a group of figures led by Uncle Starodum. They stand out from the comic staff of the play: they are noble and enlightened reasoners, academicians of virtue. They are not so much the protagonists of the drama as its moral environment: they are placed near the protagonists in order to sharpen their dark physiognomies with their bright contrast ... Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sophia ... were walking, but still lifeless schemes of a new, good morality, which they put on like a mask. Time, efforts and experiments were needed to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations...
“Undergrowth” is a comedy not of persons, but of positions. Her faces are comical, but not funny, comical as roles, but not at all funny as people. They can be amusing when you see them on the stage, but disturb and upset when you meet them outside the theater, at home or in society.
... Yes, Mrs. Prostakova is a skilled interpreter of decrees. She wanted to say that the law justifies her iniquity. She said nonsense, and this nonsense is the whole point of "Undergrowth"; without it, it would be a comedy of nonsense ... The decree on the freedom of the nobility was given so that the nobleman was free to flog his servants when he wanted ...
... Mitrofan is a synonym for a stupid ignoramus and mother's minion. Fonvizin's undergrowth is a caricature, but not so much a stage caricature as an everyday one: his upbringing disfigured him more than a comedy laughed at.

“The ideological and artistic originality of the comedy D. An essay on the theme of the ideological and artistic originality of the comedy D

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