Review: Gogol-Meyerhold's "The Inspector-General"

Reviewed Work(s):
The Inspector-General by Nikolai Gogol; Vsevolod Meyerhold
A. V. Lunacharsky; Alexander Sumerkin

October, Vol. 7, Soviet Revolutionary Culture. (Winter, 1978), pp. 57-70.

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 Gogol-Meyerhold's
T h e Inspector-General*

A. V. LUNACHARSKY

translated by ALEXANDER SUMERKIN

I. A Few Words about the Past

It seems to be my fate more often than not to differ with most of our theater
critics in my opinions on Meyerhold. I remember the innumerable expressions of
delight and praise which were lavished upon T h e Magnificent Cuckold,l while I
found the production vulgar and the stage design artistically unjustified. I still
believe that even if T h e Magnificent Cuckold was important for Meyerhold's own
development and necessary, as such, for him, he has since clearly surpassed it.
Although the third Meyerhold Theater poster claims that it is still a "living and
militant production," it is now interesting, I think, only to historians.
With T h e Forest2 I began to feel a turn for the better in Meyerhold's theater.
A sensitive artist, he came to understand that his innovations and tricks, his
talented but mischievous destruction of the old theater at any cost, may be all
right, but it is not at all the sustenance our public needs. T h e Forest marked a new
approach to the old task: to single out social types and typical situations. Rich in
finds and gimmicks, the production was still hardly convincing, for it lacked a
unifying inner pivot. Meyerhold stood on the threshold separating defiance of the
old theater and the true creation of a new one.
Bubus3 was another step in that direction. The critics did not understand it
and scolded Meyerhold. It had, of course, quite a few of the witty devices in which
Meyerhold so excels: bamboo, the barker, etc., and even if Meyerhold did not
succeed in his derision of Liszt and Chopin, the musical foundation introduced
into the production gave it an unexpectedly clear rhythm.
This account of Meyerhold's production of Gogol's T h e Inspector-General ( R e v i z o r ) , as
presented on December 1, 1926, was originally published in N o v y j Mir, no. 2, 1927.
1. T h e Magnificent Cuckold, by the Belgian playwright Fernand Commelynck, was first per-
formed in Meyerhold's production at the Actors' Theater in April 1922. Its costumes and decors, to
which it owes a part of its celebrity, were designed by the painter Liubov Popova.
2. T h e Forest, a comedy in five acts by Nicolas Ostrovsky, was rearranged by Meyerhold in thirty-
three episodes and presented during the season of 1924.
3. BuDus, a comedy by Faiko, was mounted by Meyerhold in January 1925. LJnlike the Gogol
production, it was not received enthusiastically, although it was distinguished by a number of
significant theatrical innovations.
 58 OCTOBER

The Meyerhold production of Bubus, 1925.

I have long dreamed (and discussed, as well; see my long speech "On Musical
Drama") of subordinating drama, with its philistine looseness, as it were, to the
clear rhythms that have traditionally been dominant in opera and particularly in
ballet. If these two arts require dramatization, if, that is, their conventions need
more realistic richness, the drama seemed to be in need of a certain, moderate
rhythmicization. The rhythm of music and movement, musically determined,
would find an immediate repercussion in the rhythmicization of space, bringing a
greater graphic clarity to the whole stage area at any moment of the performance.
As I then thought, a certain role in this rhythmicization could be played by
constructivism.
Bubus made Meyerhold's progress towards this goal extremely clear. The
rhythmic composition in time and space in no way diminished the authenticity of
the production, that is, its quality of social caricature. No wonder that, at the far-
ranging discussion held after the performance, I could not help noting Meyer-
hold's significant advance towards the theater we need. Meyerhold, in turn,
responded by saying that he had been consciously moving towards socio-
mechanics, as we both called it then.
Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General 59

Concurrently with Bubus, Roar C h i n a 4 appeared in a flash, as a nearly

perfect agitprop, based on the same principles, and still a little overloaded-in this
instance with the Chinese local color. The most remarkable thing in the produc-
tion of Erdman's Mandate,j next to its wonderful text (I mean the text, not the
play, which is a mediocre comedy), was the talented fusion of an honest realism
(itself a synthesis of general phenomena and the mundanely specific) with a free
fantasy.
Like a great graphic artist who reduces specific living phenomena to their
essence, at the same time never breaking with a full-blooded reality, and then, at
times, combining real objects or figures in a really fantastic way, Meyerhold broke
with both the conventions of the theater and those of reality and made a giant step
towards a completely free theater. He juggled with his magnificent Guliachkins
and their environment, he indulged in magic fantasies, and never was his
indulgence unwarranted. The most unexpected tricks, such as the incredible sets
in the finale, splendidly underscored the essence of the phenomena portrayed.
A realist artist cannot be a slave to reality. This rule is important, as is
another: the artist must maintain permanent contact with reality, always remain-
ing within a language of phenomena familiar to the public.
Of course, the great theater of the past always followed this path, but to
follow a path is also to advance.
W o e t o W i t , T h e Inspector-General, and T h e Marriage presume not only the
truth but also the grotesque, the caricature, and without the atmosphere of this
grotesquery they can only fade. Why, then, can an artist not subject older works, as
well as new ones, to an experimental transformation, using the multilayered
optics of variously refracted grotesques?
T h e Inspector-General is a new step along this path. It is the most con-
vincing of Meyerhold's productions. In T h e Inspector-General he deals, of course,
with a text significantly superior to that of T h e Mandate. This text, with its
wonderful unfolding of the action, has provided him with types which, as
integral parts of their picturesque times, can at the same time develop into
generalized human masks, at least within the context of a presocialist society.

11. G o g o l Offended
Was Meyerhold entitled to change Gogol or to interpret his work in a free
style? Of course he was.
It is time to put an end to idle talk of hidebound respect for the classics! Who
is not aware that the most classic of the classics-Aeschylus and Aristophanes-are
performed today throughout the world in a way that bears not the slightest
similarity to the original performances as they were seen and, undoubtedly, staged

4. Roar C h i n a , a theatrical event in nine parts by Sergei Tretvakov, was directed by Fedorov and
Boutarine and produced at Meverhold's theater in January 1926.
5. T h e Mandate, a three-act comedy by Nicolas Erdman, opened in 1926.
 OCTOBER

by their very authors? Who is not aware that Shakespeare's plays are subjected to
all kinds of changes, abridgments, distortions, and that productions of Hamlet,
for example, differ from each other and from the original production at the Globe
Theater as though absolutely different plays? Why is nobody upset when Leconte
de Lisle rewrites The Erinniae and H o h a n n s t a h l adapts Electra? Why could
Phaedra be rewritten, each time in a new way, by Seneca, Racine, and dlAnnunzio,
each of them checking it only very slightly against Euripides? Why does no one
doubt that Pushkin would have been perfectly happy had he seen Moussorgsky's
Boris Godunov, although Moussorgsky added and deleted a few episodes, and his
characters sing instead of talk, which was, of course, in no way intended by
Pushkin?
Of course, we must preserve these plays in their exact texts, and our academic
theaters must stage them in a manner as faithful to the original as possible. I quite
agree with this point of view, and I would like to ask of the Maly Theater, for
instance: are you certain that in your productions of the masterworks of Russian
classical theater everything has been done to insure excellence and fidelity to their
original forms as more or less approved by their authors?
It is, however, ridiculous to assign to Meyerhold's theater the highly
respectable curatorial task of a museum. If the Maly Theater, to which such duties
are quite legitimately assigned, has some new-style productions along with old
ones, it would be simply barbaric to forbid even the most daring of its fantasies to
the theater that is meant to be a laboratory for experimentation and research.
Pushkin once said, "I do not find it funny when a despicable dauber spoils
Raphael's Madonna." But if somebody had announced that, in leaving Raphael's
picture to the Dresden Gallery, he wanted to paint a version, a variation, maybe
even a caricature of the Madonna, Pushkin would certainly not have banned it.
For if so, one might then ask him, "Alexander Sergeevich, how, after the Gospels,
did you dare in Gauriliada to depict the Annunciation in your own way?"
I can understand when conservative elements in our society are outraged by
innovations, but when I hear communists say, "It's a scandal, it's not the true
Gogol," I can only throw u p my hands and admit that the human mind can
accommodate political ideas of the most revolutionary sort and aesthetic philistin-
ism at one and the same time.
If you want the true Gogol, go to the theater that is meant to show it; and if
you want to see Meyerhold's production, go and see Gogol reflected in the most
complicated mirror surface of our consciousness.
The second question is whether Meyerhold had the right to use the variants
that Gogol himself rejected?
Some people say, "Gogol knew why he had rejected one or another version,
so why should we revive them?" But Gogol even burnt his second volume [of the
Dead Souls-trans.], and we know that he burnt it under the influence of a hostile
environment. Who can provide evidence that Gogol did not reject one or another
Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General

version for fear of shocking the prim functionaries of the Saint Petersburg public?
Who can vouch for the fact that he was not afraid of censorship? We shall soon be
seeing Boris G o d u n o v as conceived by Moussorgsky. We know that this great
composer accepted its adaptation by the facile, mundane Rimski-Korsakov, but it
is still questionable whether this adaptation had not deprived the original Boris of
three-fourths of its titanic power.
Of course the versions presented by Meyerhold are not new discoveries, and I
can easily imagine that some spectators might prefer the definitive Gogol version
of T h e Inspector-General to Meyerhold's, but still, all the new lines that I heard at
the performance were fresh and amusing, they all bear Gogol's imprint, and I
really enjoyed them.

111. T h e Visual Aspect of the

Production
The most remarkable visual feature of the production is its extraordinary
artistic completeness. Often, watching even the best productions at the best
theaters, I have felt that the scenic space was incomplete. Often you confront a
large stage with two characters engaged in a dialogue at one corner. If you
concentrate your attention on that corner, the remaining space no longer exists for
you, practically speaking, but it keeps irritating your subconscious by its mere
presence in the nonfocused part of your vision. If your eye starts wandering
around the full stage (which is always a kind of work of art), you can no longer
concentrate on the action. Not to mention the fact that at almost any theater
(constructivist theater has fought against this) the actors crawl about on the floor
of a vast stage so that five-sixths of its space remains void. Very seldom is the
staging so perfect that absolutely every character with no lines to speak at the
given moment, every position of an actor's head, hands, or feet becomes a part of
the overall composition.
We can only call a picture, or rather a color engraving, good if all the lines
and colors are brought together into a unified whole. An artist would not make
one single dot without a correlation with the general composition of the picture,
just as a composer would never introduce a single note without the most elaborate
artistic-mechanical calculations.
This is the greatest achievement of Meyerhold in his Inspector-General, and
on an unprecedented scale. The large stage remains unfilled in most instances (in
some scenes it is used, but it does not pretend to be interesting); it is a large
semicircle of polished wood with doors. The action is presented to the audience as
if in a basket. A certain playing area, where objects and people act, is moved
forward according to the director's will. This space is lit u p accordingly (with
great skill) and resembles a moving bunch of flowers or a most orderly kaleido-
scope. The people and the objects follow one another continuously in the
incessant dynamics, like color engravings.
62 OCTOBER

I contend that absolutely any moment of this large production photo-

graphed on a color still would be a finished work of art; I stress: finished to the very
last detail.
Another original feature of the production's style was not so much the
absence of scenery (which is not so important, any more than the elaborate
constructions in their original architectural-mechanical forms), as an extremely
successful attempt to make authentic objects play their roles. Not only are sets
banished, but also accessories. It is real furniture that we see, real fruits, real
groceries, as well as real people in real clothes, a combination of people and
objects taken directly from life. Meyerhold believes that there is no need for artistic
transformation. In this sense he is a complete materialist. But, nevertheless, these
authentic objects assume an intense pictorial significance, thanks to the composi-
tion and the lighting.
Here I cannot help making a certain reproach to Meyerhold.
Inspired by his idea, in an effort to make the production festive and joyful,
Meyerhold exaggerated the luxury of the furniture and the costumes, particularly
those of Anna Andreevna. Of course, the beautiful things made of mahogany and
Karelian birchwood, which Meyerhold was fortunately able to find, are wonderful;
of course, the dresses of Anna Andreevna resemble charming Kustodiev pictures of
merchants' fanciful abundance; but still, for a small clerk's wifc in a provincial
town, they are not justified artistically. It would be even more interesting to see the
same efforts without such aesthetic sugarcoating. Even though it is refined sugar of
the highest quality, and it pleases the audience's palate, that is not the point. A
director should not be carried away by purely sensuous visual pleasure. Because of
the luxurious dresses and other exaggerated effects of her appearance, Anna
Andreevna is pushed by the director too much to the fore, and, to some extent, this
destroys the play's balance. But this critical remark is not so serious, and I repeat:
the idea of assigning roles to authentic objects, instead of using stage props, is an
excellent one and very well handled by Meyerhold.

Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General, 1926.

Gogol-Meyerhold's T h e Inspector-General

IV. A l l Upside Down

T h e critics and the public were shocked by the abrupt ways in which
Meyerhold broke all the traditions of staging T h e Inspector-General. Some people
even had the feeling that everything was done simply "upside down"; for instance,
Osip must be old, so Meyerhold made him young. According to this logic,
Khlestakov should have been made old, but Meyerhold did not do that.
T h e idea is not to turn everything upside down; it is to try to break away
from the old traditions, and to create a completely new and fresh version. It is, of
course, the right of every true artist.
Why can our music critics demand, and with good reason, from our pianists,
chamber or orchestra musicians a new interpretation of the classics, including
Beethoven himself, one that would be more adequate to our time; and why cannot
such demands be made of an innovator in the theater?
Many of Meyerhold's innovations really work; Osip, for instance. It is true
that, generally speaking, Osip's character is richer in traditional productions of
T h e Inspector-General, and that Meyerhold, having deleted a large part of his
role, made it less important. But still, the character of a rogue who has tasted the
Saint Petersburg way of life is very colorful. Avoiding monologues, as usual,
Meyerhold introduces a charming little scene of an intimate duo between Osip
and a serving wench. In this way he justifies Osip's lines about his experience in
jumping off a coach into an archway, lines that used to sound a little strange when
pronounced by an elderly man. Meyerhold added a little spice to the mayor's wife's
willing flirtation with their guest's young and outgoing servant, making him, the
only representative of folksy good humor and reason, chuckle a few times in most
appropriate places. In short, he created an extremely curious and interesting
version for which we can thank him-even knowing that many theaters may not
accept a version that dismisses the decent, good old Osip, sanctified by tradition
and, to be sure, superb.
Many people are outraged by the changes in the roles of Dobchinsky and
Bobchinsky. I found them magnificent. I did not notice any of the special gloom or
criminal overtones that some critics found in the characters of these two provin-
cials. T h e comic element of Meyerhold comes from the fact that he replaced the
usual hastiness and commotion of their action-not very natural against the
background of the slow and boring life of a somnolent provincial town-with
extreme slowness in gesture and speech. They are people who like to tell
everything in great detail. I really do not know which is more appropriate to this
slow story with its numerous digressions, its taste for details, its habit of
beginning everything from Adam-a hasty, nervous speech or the love for detailed
descriptions and exposition, the desire to torture their listeners, which Meyerhold
gave to his marionettes. I disagree radically with those who find Dobchinsky and
Bobchinsky "not realistic." Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky are presented as being
close to clown figures. Almost nowhere in Gogol's work is there so much
64 OCTOBER

caricature as in these two characters, and it is in Meyerhold's production that I saw

real people in their parts for the first time.
I cannot enumerate all the fortuitous "reversals" introduced by Meyerhold in
the process of creating a new and fresh version. But, naturally, there are some
defects, too. T h e mayor, for instance, is a failure. Starkovsky's acting is not bad,
and in the final scene he creates a strong enough impact. But the whole type is
conceived somehow unconvincingly. Always mistrustful of words, always trying
to cover u p for them by action, Meyerhold's staging of the mayor's report in the
first scene is accompanied by all kinds of manipulations and treatments by the
doctor, and they distract one's attention from the main course of the action. Then,
his picture of the mayor as a hysterical neurotic is not followed u p in later
episodes, and it does not fit this thick-skinned individual. In general, it is hard to
say what kind of mayor this one is, where he comes from, and what his past has
been. In my view, the mayor, in this sense, is not complete, yet it would be most
interesting to try to bring out in him, as well, a full-blooded character that would,
at the same time, be different from the traditional clichi. of a small-scale tyrant.
In short, Meyerhold should have made a greater effort, for thus far he has not
found it.
V. T h e Logic of the Production
Some people found mysticism in the production. A burnt child really does
dread the fire! They even discovered doubles in it! Having read a few reviews, I
went to see the performance with a mixture of curiosity and perplexity. How
could Meyerhold, an inveterate enemy of mysticism of any kind (not long ago he
rejected even psychology!) make a Hobannian-Dostoevskyan-St.-Petersburg-
White-Nights show with doubles? Of course, there was nothing of the kind in the
production.
I hope I shall be excused for this remark, but to me all this fear of mysticism
and compulsive search for doubles shows that not only a major part of our public,
but also a majority of our critics simply cannot see when watching a performance.
I did not talk with Meyerhold about the internal logic of the production or
about the reasons that led him to introduce new characters with n o lines to say,
etc., but I am absolutely convinced that what I am going to say coincides with his
intentions, because all this is quite clear, quite material, and not at all clouded by
a mysterious haze.
Meyerhold's presupposition is that monologues are inadmissible. One can
accept or reject it, but to Meyerhold a character's long speech to himself seems
awkward and obsolete. Since Gogol once mentions a certain officer, a great
gambler and drunkard whom Khlestakov met in his travels, Meyerhold decided to
use this figure. He makes this gambler and drunkard follow Khlestakov like a
shadow. He is a genuine masterpiece of Meyerhold's. His bluish-pale face, his
broken eyebrow, his provincial pretense of being "irresistable," his incessant
Gogol-Meyerhold's T h e Inspector-General 65

drinking, his brave dances when he is high, his cynical mocking smile replaced by
a dead facial expression when, having drunk too much, he passes out-all this is
so great, so much in the style of the period, that from a partner who makes
Khlestakov's acting more lively and allows the director to make his mise-en-sc6nes
richer, Meyerhold made a step to a personal creation, theatrical and nondramatur-
gical at the same time. The officer has n o lines to say, he does not influence the
course of action, and therefore he remains outside the literary drama. He is an
animated piece of furniture, an accessory, and yet an unforgettable personality.
Meyerhold makes exceptionally skillful use of this officer in an astonishing
trick, fully justified psychologically. Khlestakov noticed that he was being taken
for somebody else. He already has a vague, half-conscious idea of exploiting the
misunderstanding of the provincial clods by pretending to be a big shot. So he
borrows an overcoat and a shako from his companion, leaving him his own old
fur hat and worn raincoat, and from this moment on he really looks like an
important type. His very psychology starts to change at this moment. Before our
eyes a frightened fop, a most unfunctionary functionary, is transformed into the
phantasmagorical figure of an impostor. This is the only justification for the
action that follows. A small clerk, who cannot even afford a decent wardrobe,
would have been almost inconceivable as Khlestakov in his following scenes. Do
the local functionaries believe he is an inspector-general in disguise? Meanwhile,
the overcoat with a fur collar and the shako cannot but astound the provincial
characters.
T h e production, divided into fifteen scenes (Meyerhold likes this device,
borrowed from the cinema), unfolds in the following order: the first two scenes,
with little variations, do not bring serious surprises; the third scene, "A Unicorn,"
already introduces what some critics mistook for mysticism. When Anna An-
dreevna is alone in her room, some officers suddenly appear around her-two,
four, eight. They sing a comic serenade for her, and at the end one more officer
jumps from a box and fres his gun.
What is the meaning of all this abracadabra? True, the officers are wonderful
types, very much in the style of the epoch. True, the serenade is fdled with perfect
brio, and the public greets the scene with loud applause. But still, where is all this
happening? Is it reality or a hallucination, a Hoffmanniana?
It is none of these. It is just a device that a good book illustrator can use to
make a vignette. For instance, if a writer finishes a chapter with the words, "her
head was always full of officers in bright uniforms flooding her with compliments
and ready to shoot themselves for the sake of her beautiful eyes," the artist can
make this phrase into a vignette, even making it fantastic to the point where the
above-mentioned officers would all be accommodated inside Anna Andreevna's
head. Meyerhold does exactly the same. He claims the right that legitimately
belongs to the cinema: dreams and other peculiar visions can be shown as a
fantastic reality. I d o not know if anyone has used it in the theater before. I know
66 OCTOBER

T h e "Unicorn" episode from The Inspector-General.

that in the cinema it is now the most ordinary of devices, and Meyerhold applied it
to his production with extraordinary grace and conviction.
The fourth and fifth scenes present no special difficulties. In the sixth scene,
"Procession," the remarkable mise-en-scene should be noted. The movements of
Khlestakov and those of the people massed on the stage, and Garin's superb acting
form an exceptionally expressive picture. I could not help noting as well the great
moment when Garin-Khlestakov sings of his purpose in life, which is "to cull the
posies of pleasure," and at the same time noisily spits in a most disgusting and
sickening way. This is the first introduction on the stage of the philosophy of life
condemned by Gogol in T h e Inspector-General, and by a simple action it is raised
to the peak of generalization. This sickening spit followed by a belching sound,
accompanying the light-minded, merry, and half-drunken conviction in "culling
the posies of pleasure," makes you feel to the bones the meaning of philistine
hedonism.
The seventh scene, "With a Plump Bottle," is staged in the finest possible
way. Khlestakov is drunk, so drunk that reality looks fabulous to him. Not only
does he keep telling lies, but he enjoys his lies to the full, and even his smallest
wishes seem to come true in no time. When he wants to, he hears magic music
play, he sees the delicacies he has dreamt about appear in front of him, etc. So, this
scene is not to be understood as true reality but as reality filtered through the haze
of a half-drunken mind.
Is it mysticism? But how could it suddenly turn into mysticism? If a novelist
has the right to tell us how a drunken man sees the world, why indeed can the
theater not show it? It is true that hitherto we have always demanded that the
Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General 67

theater show only what the public can really see. An exception could be made only
for mysterious ghosts or pseudoscientific hallucinations. Meyerhold has gone
much farther: not scientific hallucinations, but reality distorted by alcoholic
excitement.
The eighth scene, "Bribes," is even more upsetting and revolting for the
untrained public and critics who are unable to understand the perfectly logical,
but new devices for the theater.
One should simply remember that in the preceding scene, "The Elephant
Fallen off Its Feet," Khlestakov is seen in a dead drunken sleep. During the day he
already managed to cheat the provincials out of their money. In his dreams he sees
all these inhuman mugs rushing in a strange confusion. He dreams of lines of
flirting women, of trembling hands with offerings stretched out to him, of piles of
envelopes with money falling down on him like rain.
Thoroughly justified as well is the idea of scenic action shown through the
main character, of showing reality through Khlestakov's eyes. Meyerhold used this
device twice: first, by making us see the characters eating dessert at the mayor's
table through the eyes of the drunken Khlestakov, and then, by seeing Khlesta-
kov's day in a curious stylization of a drunken dream.
Is this not a bold expansion of stage technique? Doesn't it spare us a scene
with real bureaucrats and their offerings presented successively to Khlestakov-an
excellent, but slightly too familiar scene by now, and, to be absolutely frank, a
slightly monotonous one? Let us present the other version as well, of course. I
cannot, however, help welcoming the new one, brimming with healthy fantasy
and devoid of morbid contraptions. Because dreams are part of reality and some
people's dreams are more revealing than their waking actions.

The "Procession" episode from The Inspector-

General.
68 OCTOBER

The "Kiss Me" scene is done on the same astonishingly high level. I have
already mentioned that it was a true comedy of love. Love or, at least, petty-
bourgeois love is subjected to such ruthless criticism, is corroded by such a
concentrated acid, that an attentive spectator is involuntarily disturbed. This scene
has everything: sweet music, dances, infatuation, and jealousy, the inconstancy of
man's love, flirting women-all the elements of the eternally recreated fabric of the
game of love. And behold! How horrendous it all looks! The torpid drunken cadet
strumming on the piano, the sentimental songs, the intoxication, the almost
bestial frivolity.
Meyerhold was even bold enough to take his charming Anna Andreevna to
the bathroom and then make her pale in fear under persistent questioning by
Khlestakov's "Where have you been?" It would have been obscene had it not been
so precise. All this is necessary because Meyerhold wants to show that only a thin
veil separates this false and vulgar "feast" of philistine eroticism from a toilet.
Watching the scene, I asked myself, not without fear-can it be that
Meyerhold is attacking all love, eroticism in general?
No, this is not a boring Christian sermon on the viciousness of all love,
because it is physical, or an attack on the false decorative character of any
superstructure above the physiological level. Meyerhold does not take this
misleading route. He is carried away by a real anger, smashing away in his
mockery at the poetry of the salons where males and females cover their brutal
carnality with silk dresses, contre-danses, and sweet sounds.
Then comes a short break. I did not like the scene "The Lord of the
Finances." It is not convincing. Probably, Meyerhold should have gone farther
and given a real picture of tragicomic grief. But he did not do so. The episode with
the noncommissioned officer's widow is very vulgar. I think it should be changed.
The rest, in my view, is not original enough. This scene, essentially very well
designed and never as yet shown on stage with the strength worthy of Gogol, does
not capture the public's attention.
"The Blessing" is much better, and "The Dream of Saint Petersburg" is
superb. This is one of the best scenes. With the generosity of a Jordaens,
Meyerhold heaped the stage with all kinds of food. After the meal the mayor and
his spouse, both plump, complacent, and melting, surrounded by everything
conceivable to appease the demands of a human belly, let their stomachs dream
about the future. Suddenly I understood with exceptional clarity what I had never
before understood when reading T h e Inspector-General or watching it on stage:
that behind his satire of small provincial bureaucracy, with, of course, certain
allusions to its "sister-in-law," the bureaucratic absolute monarchy, Gogol hit
more deeply at the fundamental philosophy of carnivorous gluttony of this fat-
assed Russia.
What was the foundation of the distasteful version of the bourgeois world
that was the "True Russia"? An outright gluttony, not even ornamented with
Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General 69

grace. These were the words of Uspensky and Shchedrin, on the permanent tune
in the sad Russian symphony: to gorge, to paw women, to humiliate one's fellow
men in a sadistic intoxication, to trample them, to fawn in self-oblivion upon
those' higher in rank-and all this in order to win the right to gorge more
extravagantly and to trample more cruelly. This was the solid framework of the
bureaucratic philosophy from top to bottom, and, with few exceptions, of the
entire society. Meyerhold, in his turn, makes of this episode a picture approaching
a Dutch still life in its rounded contours, its abundance, the streams of melted
butter watering the isle of the blessed, on which the mayor and his spouse, among
fruits, hams, and game, take flight on the wings of the most elevated carnivorous
fantasy. Music contributes to this elevation of the triumphant, bestial joy of
living. But at the same time the lramework ol the deadly bestiality is strikingly
obvious, as if the stage were seen in X-ray.
The final scene is also excellent. Leaving aside the magnificent preparation
of the fall of the mayor and his spouse from the heights of their fantasies to the

The finale of The Inspector-General.

 OCTOBER

depths of the abyss, the variety of human types, the perfect organization of the
commotion and hustle in the overcrowded drawing room-all that precedes the
final chords, when, in a stroke of a genius-director's magic wand, Meyerhold
suddenly reveals the horrifyingly mechanistic, inhuman, deadly character of the
world depicted by Gogol as he had witnessed it. T h e moment when the group of
ugly marionettes come to a standstill, stricken by the news of an imminent
thunderous inspection, the motion that had animated them before is transformed
into a mechanistic, convulsive dance that sweeps this garland of human trash
away through the auditorium. Having decomposed the portrayed world into rest
and motion, Meyerhold tells them in the imperious voice of a clairvoyant artist:
you are dead, and your motion is that of the dead.
One leaves the theater overwhelmed with pride for the fresh achievements of
Russian theater, and filled, as well, with a kind of horror at Gogol's uncanny satire
of the humanity he knew.
Debates on T h e Inspector-General will continue to rage. Well then, let us
debate!