Comic artistic means in the work of the undergrowth. Household comedy "Undergrowth" D

The originality of the comedy D. I. Fonvizin "Undergrowth". Fonvizin executed in his comedies the wild ignorance of the old generation and the rough polish of the superficial and external European semi-education of the new generations. The comedy "Undergrowth" was written by D. I. Fonvizin in 1782 and still does not leave the stage. She is one of best comedies author. M. Gorky wrote: “In The Undergrowth, for the first time, the corrupting significance of serfdom and its influence on the nobility, spiritually ruined, degenerated and corrupted precisely by the slavery of the peasantry, was brought to light and onto the stage.”

All the heroes of Fonvizin's comedy "Undergrowth" are conditionally divided into positive and negative. The Prostakov family is negative. Moral, positive people are represented by Pravdin, Starodum, Sofya and Milon.

Some literary critics believed that the positive characters of "Undergrowth" were too ideal, that in fact there were no such people and they were simply invented by the author. However, documents and letters of the 18th century confirm the existence real prototypes heroes of Fonvizin's comedy. And about negative characters, such as the Prostakovs and Skotinins, it is safe to say that, despite the unconditional generalization, they were often found among the Russian provincial nobility that time. There are two conflicts in the work. The main one is love, since it is he who develops the action of the comedy. Sophia, Mitrofanushka, Milon and Skotinin participate in it. The characters have different attitudes to the issues of love, family, marriage. Starodum wants to see Sophia married to a worthy man, wishes her mutual love. Prostakova wants to marry Mitrofan profitably, to rake in Sophia's money. Mitrofan's motto: "I don't want to study, I want to get married." This phrase from the comedy "Undergrowth" has become winged. Overgrown people who do not want to do anything, do not want to study and dream only of pleasures, are called Mitrof-1 noushki.

Another comedy conflict is socio-political. It affects very important questions upbringing and education, morality. If Starodum believes that education comes from the family and the main thing in a person is honesty and good manners, then Prostakova is convinced that it is more important for the child to be fed, dressed and live for pleasure. The comedy "Undergrowth" was written in the traditions of Russian classicism. Almost all the main features of classicism are observed in it. literary direction. There is also a strict division of heroes into positive and negative, the use speaking names and the application of the rule of three unities (the unity of place, time, and action). The unity of the place is observed, since all the action of the comedy takes place in the village of Prostakovs. Since it lasts for 24 hours, the unity of time is observed. However, the presence of two conflicts in comedy violates the unity of action.

In contrast to Western European, Russian classicism has a connection with Russian folklore, civic patriotism and a satirical orientation. All this takes place in the Undergrowth. The satirical bias of the comedy does not cause any doubts. The proverbs and sayings that are often found in the text of the comedy make it a truly folk comedy (“Golden caftan, but a lead head”, “Courage of the heart is proved in the hour of battle”, “Wealth does not help a stupid son”, “Respect is worthy of one who is in ranks not according to money, but in the nobility not according to ranks"), Pushkin called "Undergrowth" " the only monument folk satire". She is imbued with the spirit of civic patriotism, since her goal is to educate a citizen of her fatherland. One of the main virtues of comedy is its language. To create the characters of his heroes, Fonvizin uses speech characteristics. Lexicon Skotinin and Mitrofan is significantly limited. Sofya, Pravdin and Starodum speak correctly and very convincingly. Their speech is somewhat schematic and seems to be enclosed in a strict framework.

Negative characters, in my opinion, turned out to be more alive with Fonvizin. They speak plain spoken language, in which there is sometimes even abusive vocabulary. Prostakova's language does not differ from the language of serfs; her speech contains many rude words and common expressions. Tsyfirkin in his speech uses expressions that were used in military life, and Vralman speaks in broken Russian. In modern Fonvizin society, admiration for abroad and contempt for their Russian reigned. The upbringing of the nobles wanted much better. Often the younger generation found itself in the hands of ignorant foreigners who, apart from backward views on science and bad qualities, could instill nothing in their wards. Well, what could the German coachman Vralman Mitrofanushka teach? What knowledge could an overage child acquire in order to become an officer or official? In The Undergrowth, Fonvizin expressed his protest against the Skotinins and Prostakovs and showed how it is impossible to educate young people, how spoiled they can grow up in an environment corrupted by the landowners' power, obsequiously bowing to foreign culture. Comedy is instructive, has a great educational value. It makes you think about moral ideals, about the attitude towards the family, love for one's fatherland, raises questions of education, landlord arbitrariness.

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 abuse 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 vice and stigmatizes him without mercy: if he makes the audience laugh with a picture of abuses and foolishness, then even then the laughter inspired by him 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 decisive. 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 today 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 roughness that one almost does not recognize 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 to cattle, instead of man: pigs have become 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, concluding nothing evil in his nature, having no desire to cause misfortune to anyone, becomes insensitive, with the help of pleasing and pampering, 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 (Experiment historical explanation educational play)

In the 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, academics of virtue. They are not so much the protagonists of the drama as its moral setting: they are placed near the protagonists in order to set off their dark physiognomies more sharply with their bright contrast ... Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sofya ... were walking, but still lifeless schemes of a new, good morality, which they put on themselves 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 master at interpreting decrees. She wanted to say that the law justifies her iniquity. She said nonsense, and that nonsense is the whole point of The Undergrowth; without it, it would be a comedy of nonsense ... The decree on the freedom of the nobility is given so that the nobleman is free to flog his servants when he wants ...

Mitrofan is a synonym for a stupid ignoramus and mother's minion. The undergrowth of Fonvizin is a caricature, but not so much a stage one as an everyday one: his upbringing disfigured him more than the comedy laughed at.

The history of the interpretation of the comedy "Undergrowth" over the past two centuries - from the first critical reviews 19th century to the fundamental literary works of the XX century. - rigorously returns any researcher to the same observation of the poetics of Fonvizin's masterpiece, a kind of aesthetic paradox of comedy, the essence of which the literary tradition sees in the different aesthetic dignity of ethically polar characters. Tradition considers that the criterion of this dignity is nothing more than lifelikeness: a bright, reliable, plastic image of vice is recognized as more artistically valuable than a pale ideological virtue:

V. G. Belinsky:“In his [Fonvizin's] comedy there is nothing ideal, and therefore nothing creative: the characters of fools in it are faithful and clever lists from caricatures of the then reality; the characters of the smart and virtuous are rhetorical maxims, images without faces.

P. A. Vyazemsky: “All other [except Prostakova] persons are secondary; some of them are completely extraneous, others are only adjacent to the action. ‹…› Of the forty phenomena, among which there are several quite long ones, there is hardly a third in the whole drama, and even then short ones, which are part of the action itself.

The cited observations on the poetics of The Undergrowth clearly reveal the aesthetic parameters of two antagonistic groups of comedy characters: on the one hand, verbal painting and " living life”in a plastically authentic everyday environment, on the other hand, oratory, rhetoric, reasoning, speaking. These two semantic centers very precisely define the nature artistic specificity different groups characters like different types artistic imagery, and the Russian literary tradition, to which these types go back. Do I need to say that general principles the constructions of the artistic images of the "Undergrowth" are due to the same value orientations and aesthetic settings of pictorial plastic satire (comedy) and ideologized-disembodied ode (tragedy)!

The specificity of his dramatic word, initially and fundamentally ambiguous and ambiguous, is put forward at the center of the aesthetics and poetics of The Undergrowth.

The first property that the dramatic word comedy offers to its researcher is its apparent punning nature. The speech element of the “Undergrowth” is a stream of free and involuntary puns, among which the method of destroying phraseological units is especially productive, pushing the traditionally conventional figurative with the direct literal meaning of a word or phrase:

Skotinin. ‹…› 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 by a whole head (I, 5); Skotinin. <...> Yes, I, listen, I will make everyone blow their trumpet: in the local neighborhood, and live only pigs (II, 3).

The game of meanings is inaccessible to Skotinin: moreover, that the pigs of his very large stature, and the forehead of Uncle Vavila Falaleich is incredibly strong to break, he does not want and cannot say. In the same way, Mr. Prostakov, stating that “We cannot move Sofyushkino’s real estate to us” (1.5), means real movement in physical space, and Mitrofan, answering Pravdin’s question: “Is it far are you in history? very precise indication of a specific distance: “In another you will fly to distant lands, to a thirty kingdom” (IV, 8), he does not intend to joke at all, playing with the meanings of the words “history” (an academic discipline and the genre of popular literature) and “far” (the amount of knowledge and extent of space).

Milon, Pravdin and Starodum are another matter. In their mouths, the word “strong-browed” sounds like a sentence to Skotinin’s mental abilities, and the question “Are you far in history?” suggests an answer that outlines the amount of knowledge. And this division of the meanings of the punning word between the characters of different groups acquires the meaning of characterological artistic technique. The level of meaning that the character uses begins to serve as his aesthetic characteristic:

Pravdin. When only cattle can be happy among you, then your wife will have poor peace from them and from you. Skotinin. Bad peace? bah! bah! bah! Do I have enough lights? For her alone I will give coal with a stove bench (II, 3); Ms Prostakova. Cleaned the chambers for your kind uncle (II, 5); Pravdin. <...> your guest has now just arrived from Moscow and that he needs peace much more than the praise of your son. ‹…› Mrs. Prostakova. Ah, my father! All is ready. She cleaned the room for you (III,5).

Compare with the speech of Pravdin and the dictionary of Starodum, Milon and Sophia, almost entirely consisting of similar abstract concepts, which, as a rule, belong to the sphere of spiritual life. (upbringing, learning, heart, soul, mind, rules, respect, honor, position, virtue, happiness, sincerity, friendship, love, good manners, calmness, courage and fearlessness), to make sure: synonymous relations within this group of characters are also formed on the basis of the same level of mastery of the word and its meaning. This synonymy is supported by the idea of ​​not so much consanguinity as spiritual and intellectual kinship, realized in the verbal motif of the “way of thinking”, which connects virtuous heroes"Undergrowth": "Starodum (is reading). Take the trouble to find out the way of his thoughts” (IV, 4).

For the heroes of this series, the “way of thinking” becomes, in the full sense of the word, the way of action: because otherwise than in the process of speaking (or written communication) it is impossible to recognize the way of thinking, the dialogues of Pravdin, Starodum, Milon and Sophia turn into a full-fledged stage action, in which the very act of speaking acquires dramatic meaning, since for these heroes it is speaking and verbal operations at the level of general concepts that have characterological functions.

And just as the blood relatives of the Prostakovs-Skotinins take outsiders into their circle on the basis of the level of proficiency in the word in its real, objective sense (Kuteikin), so the circle of spiritual like-minded people Starodum-Pravdin-Milon-Sofya willingly opens up towards the ideological fellow Tsyfirkin, who is guided in his actions by the same concepts of honor and office:

Tsyfirkin. I took money for the service, I didn’t take it in an empty way and I won’t take it. Starodum. Here's a straight a kind person! ‹…› Tsyfirkin. What are you complaining about, your honor? Pravdin. Because you don't look like Kuteikin (V,6).

The semantic centers of character nomination also work for the same hierarchy of meanings. Their meaningful names and surnames elevate one group to the row of things - the Prostakovs and Skotinins are simple and bestial, and Kuteikin, who joined them, leads his nominal genesis from the ritual dish of kutya; while the names and surnames of their antagonists go back to conceptual and intellectual categories: Pravdin - truth, Starodum - thought, Milon - dear, Sophia - wisdom. Why, after all, Tsyfirkin owes his last name not only to his profession, but also to an abstraction - a figure. So people-objects and people-concepts, united within a group by a synonymic connection, enter into intergroup antonymic relations. So in comedy, it is the punning word, which is a synonym and antonym for itself, that forms two types of artistic imagery - everyday heroes and ideological heroes - ascending to different literary traditions, equally one-sided and conceptual according to the model of reality they create, but also equally artistic measure - the traditions of satirical and odic imagery.

Genre traditions of satire and ode in the comedy "Undergrowth"

The doubling of the types of artistic figurativeness of the "Undergrowth", due to the punning doubled word, actualizes almost all the formative settings of the two older literary traditions XVIII V. (satires and odes) within the text of a comedy.

The very way of existence on the stage of antagonistic comedy characters, which presupposes a certain type of connection between a person and the environment in its spatial-plastic and material incarnations, resurrects the traditional opposition of satirical and odic types of artistic imagery. The heroes of the comedy are clearly divided into satirical household “couch potatoes” and odic “wanderers”.

Settlement of the Prostakovs-Skotinins is emphasized by their constant attachment to the closed space of the house-estate, the image of which grows out of the verbal background of their remarks in all its traditional components: a serf village (“Ms. Prostakova. ‹…› I was now looking for you throughout the village” - II, 5), the manor's house with its living room, which is the stage and scene of the "Undergrowth", outbuildings ("Mitrofan. Let's run to the dovecote now" - 1.4; "Skotinin. I had to go for a walk in the barnyard "- 1.8) - all this surrounds household characters"Undergrowth" plastically authentic environment of the dwelling.

The dynamism of the image of the Starodum makes him a genuine human generator and the root cause of all the incidents of the Undergrowth. And quite dramatic associations already arise along this line: in tragedy, the troublemaker also came from outside; in pre-Fonvizin comedy, the function of an external force was, on the contrary, the harmonization of a deviant world. The function of Starodum is both; he not only disturbs the tranquility of the Prostakov's monastery, but also contributes to the resolution of the comedy conflict, in which Pravdin also takes an active part.

It is curious that the satirical spatial statics of everyday life and the odic dynamics of the ideological heroes of The Undergrowth is complemented by a picture of the inheritance of odosatirical figurative structures and in regard to their stage plasticity, only with a mirror exchange of the categories of dynamics and statics. An intense physical action reigns in the camp of the accused homebodies, most clearly seen in the external plastic drawing of the roles of Mitrofan and Mrs. Prostakova, who now and then run somewhere and fight with someone (in this connection, it is appropriate to recall two stage fights, Mitrofan and Eremeevna with Skotinin and Prostakova with Skotinin):

Mitrofan. I'll run now to the dovecote (I, 4); (Mitrofan, standing still, rolls over.) Vralman. Utalets! It will not stand still, like a teak horse of a pez usda! Go! Fort! (Mitrofan runs away.)(III.8); Ms Prostakova. From morning to evening, as if I were hanged by the tongue, I don’t lay my hands on it: either I scold, or I fight (I, 5); Ms. Prostakova (running around the theater in anger and thoughts)(IV.9).

Not at all - virtuous wanderers, of which Milo shows the greatest plastic activity, twice intervening in a fight. ("separates Mrs. Prostakova from Skotinin" - III,3 and “pushing away from Sofya Eremeevna, who was clinging to her, she shouts to people, having a naked sword in her hand” - V, 2), and even Sophia, who several times makes explosive, impulsive movements on the stage: “Sofya (rushing into his arms). Uncle! (II,2); “(Seeing the Starodum, he runs up to him» (IV,1) and "throws" to him with the words: “Ah, uncle! Protect me!" (V.2). Otherwise, they are in a state of complete stage statics: standing or sitting, they conduct a dialogue - just like “two sworn speakers”. Apart from a few remarks marking entrances and exits, the plastique of Pravdin and Starodum is practically not characterized in any way, and their actions on stage are reduced to speaking or reading aloud, accompanied by typical oratorical gestures:

Starodum (pointing to Sophia). Came to her, her uncle Starodum (III, 3); Starodum (pointing to Mrs. Prostakova). Here is the wickedness worthy fruits! (V, yavl. last).

Thus, and common feature type of scenic plasticity breeds the characters of "Undergrowth" according to different genre associations: Starodum, Pravdin, Milon and Sophia are scenically statuary, like images of a solemn ode or heroes of a tragedy; their plasticity is completely subordinated to the act of speaking, which must be recognized as the only form of stage action characteristic of them. The Prostakov-Skotinin family is active and mobile, like characters in satire and comedy; their scenic plasticity is dynamic and has the character of a physical action, which is only accompanied by the word that calls it.

The same complexity of genre associations, fluctuating on the verge of types of odic and satirical imagery can be noted in the material attributes of The Undergrowth, which completes the transition of different types of artistic imagery in their human incarnation to the world image of comedy as a whole. Food, clothes and money accompany every step of the Prostakovs-Skotinins in the comedy:

Eremeevna. ‹…› I deigned to eat five buns. Mitrofan. What! Three slices of corned beef, but I don’t remember hearths, five, I don’t remember, six (I, 4); Ms. Prostakova (examining the caftan on Mitrofan). The caftan is all spoiled (I, 1); Prostakov. We ‹…› took her to our village and oversee her estate as if it were our own (I, 5); Skotinin and both Prostakovs. Ten thousand! (I.7); Ms Prostakova. This is three hundred rubles a year. We sit at the table with us. Our women wash his linen. (I.6); Ms Prostakova. I'll knit a purse for you, my friend! Sofyushkina's money would be where to put it (III,6).

Food, clothing and money appear in their simple physical nature of objects; incorporating the prostakov’s soulless flesh into their circle, they exacerbate the very property of the characters of this group, in which the literary tradition sees their “realism” and aesthetic advantage over the heroes-ideologists - their extreme physical authenticity and, so to speak, material character. Another thing is whether it is so worthy, even if only with aesthetic point of view, this property looked like for the spectator of the 18th century, for whom such materiality was an image not only of a secondary, but also undeniably not proper denied reality.

As for the real aureoles of the characters of another series, here the situation is more complicated. Letters pass through the hands of all ideological heroes, introducing them to the substantial, existential level of dramatic action. Their ability to read (i.e., to engage in spiritual activity) is somehow actualized in the stage action of the comedy with the help of those who are read on stage (Sophia reading Fenelon’s treatise “On the Education of Girls”) or behind the scenes (“Sofyushka! My glasses are on the table, in book” – IV, 3) books. So it turns out that it is things - letters, glasses and books, mainly associated with the images of ideological heroes, that take them out of everyday life into the existential area of ​​​​spiritual and intellectual life. The same applies to other objects that appear in their hands, which in this position seek to renounce their material nature as soon as possible and move into allegorical, symbolic and moral spheres, as was characteristic of the few material attributes of a tragic action before Fonvizin:

Pravdin. So, you walked away from the court with nothing? (opens his snuffbox). Starodum (takes tobacco from Pravdin). How about nothing? Snuffbox price five hundred rubles. Two people came to the merchant. One, having paid money, brought home a snuff box ‹…›. And you think the other one came home with nothing? You're wrong. He brought his five hundred rubles intact. I left the court without villages, without a ribbon, without ranks, but I brought mine home intact: my soul, my honor, my rules (III, 1).

And if money for the Prostakovs and Skotinin has a sense of purpose and causes a purely physiological thirst for possession, then for Starodum they are a means of acquiring spiritual independence from material conditions life: “Starodum. I have amassed so much that when you are married, the poverty of a worthy groom will not stop us (III, 2).

If the members of the Prostakov family in their material world eat corned beef and hearth pies, drink kvass, try on caftans and chase pigeons, fight, count once on their fingers and point a pointer through the pages of an incomprehensible book, look after other people's villages as if they were their own, knit purses for strangers money and try to steal other people's brides; if this dense material environment, into which a person enters as a homogeneous element, rejects any spiritual act as alien, then the world of Pravdin, Starodum, Milon and Sophia is emphatically ideal, spiritual, immaterial. In this world, the way of communication between people is not family resemblance, as between Mitrofan, Skotinin and a pig, but like-mindedness, the fact of which is established in the dialogical act of communicating one's opinions. This world is dominated by the recognized tragic ideologemes of virtue, honor and position, with the ideal content of which the way of thinking of each person is compared:

Pravdin. You give to feel the true essence of the position of a nobleman (III, 1); Sophia. I now vividly feel both the dignity of an honest man and his position (IV, 2); Starodum. I see in him the heart of an honest man (IV, 2); Starodum. I am a friend honest people. This feeling is rooted in my upbringing. In yours I see and honor virtue, adorned with enlightened reason (IV, 6); Pravdin. I will not resign from my position (V, 5).

Among the heroes-ideologists, the spiritual improvement of people is constantly carried out: Pravdin gets rid of his political illusions, the educated girl reads a book about her upbringing in front of the audience, drawing appropriate conclusions from it, and even Starodum - albeit in an off-stage act, about which he only narrates , - is still presented in the process of spiritual growth:

Starodum. The experiences of my life have taught me that. Oh, if I had previously been able to control myself, I would have had the pleasure of serving the fatherland longer. ‹…› Then I saw that there is sometimes an immeasurable difference between casual people and respectable people ‹…› (III, 1).

single action of people inhabiting this world - reading and speaking, perception and communication of thoughts - replaces all possible actions of dramatic characters. Thus, the world of thought, concept, ideal, as it were, becomes humanized on the stage of "Undergrowth" in the figures of private people, whose bodily forms are completely optional, since they serve only as conductors of the act of thinking and its translation into matter. sounding word. So, following the doubling of the word into the objective and the conceptual, the system of images into everyday heroes and ideological heroes, the world image of comedy splits into flesh and spirit, but comedy continues to remain the same. And this brings us to the problem of the structural originality of that general, integral world image, which is formed in a single text of the double imagery of The Undergrowth.

The punning word is funny in its vibration, combining incompatible meanings at one common point, the awareness of which gives rise to a grotesque picture of absurdity, nonsense and alogism: when there is no definite, unambiguous meaning, ambiguity arises, leaving the reader's inclination to accept one or the other of the meanings; but the point at which they meet is nonsense: if not yes and no (and yes and no), then what? This relativity of meaning is one of the most universal verbal leitmotifs of The Undergrowth. We can say that the whole comedy is located at this point of intersection of meanings and the absurd, but extremely life-like image of reality that it gives birth to, which is equally determined not by one, but by two, and, moreover, opposite world images. This grotesque flickering of the action of "Undergrowth" on the verge of reliable reality and absurd alogism finds itself in the comedy, at its very beginning, a kind of embodiment in the thing: Mitrofan's famous caftan. In comedy, after all, it remains unclear what this caftan really is: is it narrow (“Ms. (stammering from timidity). Me ... a little baggy ... "- I, 3), or, finally, it fits Mitrofan ("Skotinin. The caftan, brother, is pretty well sewn" - I, 4).

In this aspect, the name of the comedy acquires fundamental importance. "Undergrowth" - multi-figured composition, and Mitrofan is by no means its main character, therefore, the text does not give any reason to attribute the name only and exclusively to him. Undergrowth is another punning word that covers the whole world of comedy with its double meaning: in relation to Mitrofan, the word “undergrowth” appears in its objective terminological sense, since it actualizes a physiological quantitative sign - age. But in its conceptual meaning, it qualitatively characterizes another version of the world image: the young growth of Russian “new people” is also undersized; flesh without soul and spirit without flesh are equally imperfect.

The confrontation and juxtaposition of two groups of characters in a comedy emphasizes one of them. common property: both of them are located, as it were, on the verge of being and existence: the physically existing Prostakovs-Skotinins are spiritless - and, therefore, they do not exist from the point of view of the eighteenth century consciousness devoted to the existential idea; the ideas of Starodum and Co., possessing the highest reality? devoid of flesh and life - and, therefore, in a sense, they also do not exist: virtue that does not live in the flesh, and vice devoid of being, turn out to be equally a mirage life.

This is a paradoxical and absurd position most accurately reproduces the general state of Russian reality in the 1760s-1780s, when there was, as it were, an enlightened monarchy in Russia (“The Order of the Commission on the drafting of a New Code”, which exists as a text, but not as a legislative life and legal space), but in reality she was not; as if there were laws and freedom (decree on guardianship, decree on bribes, decree on the freedom of the nobles), but in fact they did not exist either, since some decrees did not work in practice, and the greatest lawlessness was created in the name of others.

Here - discovered for the first time by Fonvizin and embodied by purely artistic means deep root, to put it mildly, the "peculiarities" of the Russian reality of modern times - a catastrophic split between word and deed, which, each in itself, give rise to different realities, in no way compatible and absolutely opposite: the ideal reality of law, law, reason and virtue, which exists as a pure existential idea outside everyday life, and the everyday idealess reality of arbitrariness, lawlessness, stupidity and vice, which exists as everyday everyday practice.

The poster itself explains the characters. P. A. Vyazemsky about the comedy "Undergrowth" ... A truly social 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. In the first public theater, organized by Peter I, plays by Moliere were staged, 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 classic comedy: observing the unity of place and time, he omits the unity of action. There is virtually no plot development in the play, it consists of negative and negative conversations. positive characters. This is the influence modern author European comedy, here he goes further than Sumarokov. “French comedy is absolutely good ... There are great actors in comedy ... when you look at them, you will, of course, forget that they are playing a comedy, but it seems that you see a direct story,” Fonvizin writes to his sister, traveling around 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 up, 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 ... The main idea of ​​​​the play is to show the fruits bad upbringing, 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 the mouths of positive characters, unusually virtuous persons. As if not hoping that the reader himself will figure out who is bad and what is bad, the writer assigns the main role goodies. “True - Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sophia are not so much living faces as moralistic dummies; but after all, their real originals were no more lively than their dramatic shots ... They were walking, but still lifeless schemes of a new good morality ... It took time, intensification and experiments, to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations, ”the historian wrote about the comedy V. O. Klyuchevsky. 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 - 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 screamed ... ”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, ”“ Oh, 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.