Starodum. How to be proud of your mind, my friend! The mind, if it is just a mind, is the most trifle. With fugitive minds we see bad husbands, bad fathers, bad citizens. Kindness gives a direct price to the mind. Without him clever man- a monster. It is immeasurably higher than all the fluency of the mind. This is easy to understand for anyone who thinks carefully. There are many minds, and many different ones. An intelligent person can be easily excused if he does not have some quality of mind. An honest person cannot be forgiven in any way if some quality of the heart is missing in him. He needs to have everything he needs. The dignity of the heart is inseparable. An honest person must be a perfectly honest person.

Sophia. Your explanation, uncle, is similar to my inner feeling, which I could not explain. I now feel alive and dignity an honest man and his position.

Starodum. Job title! Ah, my friend! How this word is in everyone's language, and how little it is understood! The hourly use of this word has familiarized us with it so much that, having pronounced it, a person no longer thinks anything, feels nothing, when, if people understood its importance, no one could utter it without spiritual reverence. Think about what a job is. This is the sacred vow that we owe to all those with whom we live and on whom we depend. If the office were performed in this way, as they say about it, every state of people would remain in their piety and would be completely happy. A nobleman, for example, would consider it a first dishonor not to do anything when he has so much to do: there are people to help; there is a fatherland to serve. Then there would be no such nobles, whose nobility, one might say, was buried with their ancestors. A nobleman, unworthy of being a nobleman! I don't know anything better than him.

Sophia. Is it possible to humiliate yourself like that?

Starodum. My friend! What I said about the nobleman, let's now extend it to a person in general. Each has their own positions. Let us see how they are fulfilled, what, for example, the husbands of the present world are for the most part, let us not forget what the wives are like. O my hearty friend! Now I need all your attention. Let us take as an example an unfortunate house, of which there are many, where the wife has no cordial friendship for her husband, nor he for the wife of power of attorney; where each for his part has turned away from the path of virtue. Instead of a sincere and condescending friend, the wife sees in her husband a rude and depraved tyrant. On the other hand, instead of meekness, sincerity, the qualities of a virtuous wife, a husband sees in his wife’s soul only wayward impudence, and impudence in a woman is a sign of vicious behavior. The two became an unbearable burden to each other. Both already put in nothing good name because both have lost it. Is it possible to be worse than their condition? The house is abandoned. People forget the duty of obedience, seeing in their master himself a slave of his vile passions. The estate is being squandered: it has become a nobody's property when its owner is not his own. The children, their unfortunate children, were already orphans during the life of their father and mother. The father, having no respect for his wife, hardly dares to embrace them, hardly dares to surrender to the tenderest feelings of the human heart. Innocent babies are also deprived of the ardor of their mother. She, unworthy of having children, evades their caresses, seeing in them either the causes of her anxieties, or the reproach of her own corruption. And what upbringing should children expect from a mother who has lost her virtue? How can she teach them good manners, which she does not have? At the moment when their thoughts turn to their condition, what hell must be in the souls of both husband and wife!

Sophia. Oh, how I am horrified by this example!

Starodum. And I am not surprised: it should tremble the virtuous soul. I still have that faith that a person cannot be corrupted enough to be able to calmly look at what we see.

Sophia. My God! Why such terrible misfortunes! ...

Starodum. Because, my friend, in today's marriages one rarely consults with the heart. The matter is whether the groom is noble or rich? Is the bride good or rich? There is no question of goodwill. It never enters anyone's head that in the eyes of thinking people an honest person without a great rank is a noble person; that virtue replaces everything, and nothing can replace virtue. I confess to you that my heart will only be at peace when I see you for a husband worthy of your heart, when mutual love your...

Sophia. But how worthy husband not love friendly?

Starodum. So. Only, perhaps, do not have love for your husband, which resembled friendship b. Have a friendship for him that would resemble love. It will be much stronger. Then, after twenty years of marriage, you will find in your hearts the former affection for each other. Wise husband! Good wife! What could be more honorable! It is necessary, my friend, that your husband obey reason, and you obey your husband, and both will be completely prosperous.

Sophia. Everything you say touches my heart...

Starodum(with the most tender vehemence). And mine admires seeing your sensitivity. Your happiness depends on you. God has given you all the pleasures of your sex. I see in you the heart of an honest man. You, my heart friend, you combine both sexes of perfection. I caress that my vehemence does not deceive me, that virtue ...

Sophia. You filled all my senses with it. (Rushing to kiss his hands) Where is she?…

Starodum (kissing her hands). She is in your soul. I thank God that in you I find the firm foundation of your happiness. It will not depend on nobility or wealth. All this can come to you; however, for you there is the happiness of all this more. It is to feel worthy of all the blessings that you can enjoy...

The good uncle Starodum in the Prostakovs' estate, finding his well-behaved niece Sophia reading Fenelon's treatise on the education of girls, said to her:

Fine. I don't know your book; but read it, read it! Whoever wrote Telemachus will not corrupt morals with his pen.

Can this reasoning be applied to Undergrowth?For a modern educator or it is difficult for a teacher to keep track of the stream of impressions that their pupils and pupils absorb into themselves when reading this play. Can they, with the gullibility of Uncle Starodum, tell these impressionable readers, seeing in their hands Undergrowth:"well, read it, read it; the author, who, through the mouth of Uncle Starodum, expresses such beautiful worldly rules, cannot corrupt morals with his pen." Have a heart, have a soul, and you will be a man at all times. The mind, if it is just a mind, is the most trifle; good manners give a direct price to the mind. the main objective of all human knowledge - good manners. These maxims have been repeated for more than a hundred years since the first presentation. Undergrowth and although they have the appearance of moralizing borrowed from children's copybooks, they have not yet become bored, have not become cloying in spite of the apt observation of the same Starodum that "the hourly use of some beautiful words acquaints us with them so that, pronouncing them, a person no longer thinks, feels nothing. But, besides the wonderful thoughts and feelings of Starodum, Pravdin, Sofya, who teach directly with their simple, open meaning, there are still living faces in comedy with their passions, intrigues and vices that put them in complex, confusing situations. The moral meaning of these dramatic faces and positions is not recited loudly on the stage, not even whispered from the prompter booth, but remains behind the scenes by a hidden director who directs the course of the drama, words and deeds. actors. Is it possible to guarantee that the eye of a receptive young observer will get to this meaning of the worldly relations played out before him and this effort will produce on him the proper educational action, will deliver healthy food to his aesthetic sense and moral sense? Should one not stand beside such a reader or spectator Undergrowth with a careful comment, to become a clear, but not intrusive prompter?

undergrowth is included in the educational anthology of Russian literature and has not yet been removed from the theatrical repertoire. It is usually given during the winter holidays, and when it appears on the poster, adults say: this is a performance for schoolboys and schoolgirls. But adults themselves willingly follow their teenagers under the plausible guise of the duty of guides and do not get bored with the performance, they even cheerfully echo the noisy laughter of their underage neighbors and neighbors.

It is safe to say that undergrowth hitherto has not lost a significant portion of its former artistic power over either the reader or the viewer, despite its naive dramatic construction, which at every step reveals the threads with which the play is sewn together, nor the outdated language, nor the dilapidated stage conventions of Catherine's theater, despite even on the fragrant morality of the optimists of the last century spilled in the play. These shortcomings are covered with a special taste that comedy has acquired from time to time and which Fonvizin's contemporaries did not feel in it. These latter recognized in her characters their good or bad acquaintances; the scene made them laugh, indignant or upset, presenting to them in an artistic generalization what they encountered around them and even in themselves in the concrete coarseness of life, what was part of their environment and the structure of their life, even in their own inner being, and sincere the spectators, probably, bitterly repeated to themselves the good-natured and intelligent exclamation of Prostakov the father: "we are good!" We live in a different environment and in a different way of life; the same vices in us are revealed differently. Now around us we do not see either the Prostakovs or the Skotinins, at least with their the then guises and manners; we have the right not to recognize ourselves in these unpleasant figures. Comedy convinces us with our own eyes that such monsters could exist and once really existed, reveals them to us in their true primitive form, and this discovery makes us appreciate even more the artistic play that immortalized them. In our eyes, the play has lost the freshness of novelty and modernity, but has acquired the interest of an artistic monument of antiquity, showing what concepts and habits fertilize the cultural soil on which we walk and whose cereals we feed on. This historical interest could not be noticed in the comedy by the contemporaries of its author: watching it, they did not see us, their grandchildren; we see them through it, our grandfathers.

What's funny about undergrowth, and whether the same thing makes him laugh different ages? The youth most of all laugh, of course, at Mitrofan, the hero of the drama, an inexhaustible object of laughter, a common name for ridiculous underage stupidity and learning ignorance. But let it be allowed to intercede a little for Mitrofan: he is too ridiculed. True, he is ridiculous, but not always and even very rarely, precisely only in the best moments of his life, which are found on him very infrequently. In comedy, he does two things: thinks, to extricate himself from the difficulties in which his mother's zoological love puts him, and arrives, expressing their usual feelings in actions. Only his thoughts are funny, and his actions are not at all. According to the author, he is a fool and should reason like a fool. There is nothing funny here; it is a sin to laugh at a fool, and whoever does this becomes a worthy object of his own laughter. However, in reality, Mitrofan thinks in his own resourceful and clever way, only dishonestly and therefore sometimes inappropriately, he thinks not with the aim of finding out the truth or finding a direct path for his actions, but only in order to get out of one trouble, and therefore immediately falls into another than and punishes himself for the sophistical deceit of his thought. This is self-punishment and causes well-deserved laughter. He is amusing when, having overindulged the day before, and in order to avoid trouble to study, he tries to exaggerate the extent and bad consequences of his gluttony, even fawning over his mother in order to pity her; but, dodging the teacher, he exposes himself to the danger of falling into the hands of a doctor, who, of course, will put him on a diet, and in order to deflect this new attack from himself, he cleverly answers the proposal of his mother, who was frightened by his illness, to send for a doctor: “No, no , mother, I'd rather get well myself, "and runs away to the dovecote. He is very amusing with his original theory of grammar, with his very briskly and cleverly invented doctrine of the door of nouns and adjectives, for which invention smart adults who solemnly examined him, with Mitrofanovsky wit, reward him with the title of fool. But Mitrofan's feelings and actions directed by them are not at all funny, but only disgusting. What's funny about the disgusting pity that got the gorged 16-year-old varmint - in his heavy animal dream - at the sight of his mother, tired of beating his father? There is nothing funny in the famous scene of Mitrofan's teachings, in this incomparable, bleak sad quartet of poor teachers who cannot teach anything - a mother, in the presence of a student son with knitting in her hands, cursing over learning, and a son who is eager to marry, in the presence of a mother cursing over your teachers?<...>If a modern teacher does not set his class in such a way that he does not laugh when reading this scene, it means that such a teacher does not have a good command of his class, and for him to be able to share the laughter himself, it is terrible even to think about it. For adults, Mitrofan is not at all funny; at least it is very dangerous to laugh at him, for the Mitrofanov breed takes revenge with its fertility. Adults, before making fun of Mitrofan's stupidity or vulgarity, let them imagine their present or future nursery from the depths of the box, or look at their chicks sitting right there on the front chairs, and the swept smile will instantly fly off the frivolously cheerful face. Just as Mitrofan punishes himself for his quick-witted stupidity with well-deserved misfortunes, so the mocking modern spectator of the stage Mitrofan can eventually punish himself for premature laughter not with theatrical, but with real, worldly and very bitter tears. I repeat, one must carefully laugh at Mitrofan, because Mitrofans are not very funny and, moreover, are very vindictive, and they take revenge with the uncontrollable multiplication and elusive insight of their breed, akin to insects or microbes.

Yeah I don't know who's funny in Undergrowth. Mr. Prostakov? He is only an unintelligent, completely helpless poor fellow, not without the conscientious sensitivity and directness of a holy fool, but without a drop of will and with an excess of cowardice pitiful to tears, forcing him to be submissive even before his son. Taras Skotinin is also not very comical: in a man who described himself as a well-known domestic animal, to whom his sister herself tenderly said in the eyes that he needs a good pig more than his wife, for whom a pigsty replaces both the temple of sciences and the hearth - what is comical in this noble Russian nobleman, who, from an educational competition with his beloved animals, has become civilized to all fours? Isn't the mistress of the house herself, Mrs. Prostakova, nee Skotinina, comical? This face in the comedy is unusually well conceived psychologically and excellently sustained dramatically: during all five acts of the play, with strong-browed, truly brutish patience, not once did she wink from that cruel physiognomy that the ruthless artist ordered her to keep during the entire leisurely session, while painting with her portrait. On the other hand, she is not doubly comical: she is stupid and cowardly; pitiful - according to her husband, like Prostakov, godless and inhuman, i.e. disgusting - like a brother, like Skotinina. She is not at all conducive to laughter; on the contrary, at the mere sight of this outrageous mischievous woman, not only her downtrodden husband, but also the modern viewer, protected from her for a century, begins to blur in the eyes and faith in a person, in her neighbor, begins to waver.

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 sharply set off their dark physiognomies with their light contrast. They fulfill a role in drama similar to that of screens, pots of flowers, and other devices in a photographic office that are designed to regulate light and perspective. Such they should be according to the then dramatic theory; perhaps they were also according to the plan of the author of the comedy; but they do not seem quite like that to the modern viewer, who does not forget that he sees before him the Russian society of the last century. True, Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sofya are not so much living faces as moralistic dummies; but even their actual originals were no more lively than their dramatic photographs. They hurriedly repeated and, stammering, read to those around them new feelings and rules, which they somehow adapted to their inner being, as they fitted foreign wigs to their bristly heads; but these feelings and rules just as mechanically stuck to their homegrown, natural concepts and habits, like those wigs to their heads. They 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, so that this moralistic mask could grow into their dull faces and become their living moral physiognomy. Where, for example, was Fonvizina to take the living, well-bred niece Sofya, when such nieces were only 15 years old before the appearance Undergrowth were just being designed by Uncle Betsky in various pedagogical reports and styles, when the educational societies established for this purpose for noble and petty-bourgeois girls, on his order, were still sculpting the first test samples of a new good manners, and these girls themselves, so carefully conceived pedagogically, like our Sophia, only yet sat down to read the Fenelons and other treatises on their own upbringing? The artist could create only from the material prepared by the teacher, and Sofya came out of him as a freshly made doll of good manners, from which the dampness of the pedagogical workshop still breathes. Thus, Fonvizin remained an artist and, in the visible shortcomings of his comedy, did not betray the artistic truth in his very caricatures: he could not make living faces from the walking dead or foggy ghosts, but depicted by him bright faces, without becoming alive, remain real persons, phenomena taken from life.

And are they as lifeless as they are used to presenting them? As beginners in their role, they still stumble, stumble, repeating lessons barely completed from La Bruyère, Duclos, Nakaz and other textbooks of public and private morality of that time; but as new converts they are a little arrogant and overzealous. They themselves have not yet seen enough of their new moral attire, they speak so cheekily, self-confidently and self-satisfiedly, they savor their own academic virtue with such taste that they forget where they are, with whom they are dealing, and therefore sometimes get into a mess, which intensifies the comedy of the drama. Starodum, who interprets the benefits of geography to Madame Prostakova by saying that on a trip with geography you know where you are going, is right, no less and no more lively person than his interlocutor, who, with her usual decisiveness and rather well-read, objects to him with a subtle consideration borrowed from one Voltaire's story: "Yes, cabbies, what's the point? That's their business." Clever, educated people laugh so complacently at this society of rude or pitiful savages with whom they are visiting, even at such petty fools as they consider Mitrofan and Taras Skotinin - that the latter showed unusual vigilance when he asked, pointing to one of these noble guests, Sophia's groom: "Which of us is funny? Ha, ha, ha!" The venerable Uncle Starodum himself is so playfully disposed that, at the sight of a brother and sister who had fought in the blood, to whose house he had just arrived, he could not help laughing and even testified to the hostess herself that he had never seen anything funnier from his birth, for which he was deservedly interrupted by her remark that this, sir, was not at all funny. Throughout the first scene of the fifth act, the same uncle Starodum, who has grown rich by honest labor, and the official of the governorship Pravdin, importantly talk about how illegally they oppress their own kind by slavery, what a pleasure it is for sovereigns to own free souls, how flatterers distract sovereigns from the connection of truth and trap their souls in their network, how a sovereign can make people good: one has only to show everyone that without good manners no one can go out to the people and get a place in the service, and "then everyone will find his own benefit to be good-natured and everyone will be good." These good people, who discussed on the stage in front of the Russian public about such serious subjects and invented such easy means to make all people kind, were sitting in one of the estates filled with serfs of numerous Mrs. Prostakovs, nee Skotinins, with one of which both of them could hardly cope, and even the use of weapons by an officer passing by with his team. Listening to these interlocutors, it is as if you are listening to a merry fairy tale that took them away from the reality surrounding them "to distant lands, to a distant kingdom", where Mitrofan was taken by the cowgirl Khavronya, who taught him "stories". This means that the faces of comedy, called upon to serve as formulas and models of good morals, are not devoid of comic liveliness.

All these are false notes not of a comedy, but of life itself, played out in it. This comedy is an incomparable mirror. Fonvizin in it somehow managed to stand right in front of Russian reality, look at it simply, directly, point-blank, with eyes not armed with any glass, a look not refracted by any points of view, and reproduce it with the unconsciousness of artistic understanding. Drawing what he observed, he, as a proven artist, did not refuse to create; but this time, and where he hoped to create, he only copied. This happened because this time the poetic look of the author through what it seemed penetrated to what is really happened; The simple, sad truth of life, covered by mirages striking the eyes, suppressed playful fantasy, usually mistaken for creativity, and called into action the highest creative power of vision, which, behind the ghostly phenomena visible to everyone, is able to discern reality that no one notices. The glass that reaches the stars invisible to the naked eye is stronger than that which reflects the wandering lights that occupy idle spectators.

Fonvizin took the heroes Undergrowth straight from the whirlpool of life, and took what he found, without any cultural coverings, and put them on stage with all the confusion of their relations, with all the sodomy of their untidy instincts and interests. These heroes, snatched from the public mind for the amusement of the theatrical audience, turned out to be not at all funny, but simply intolerable in any well-organized society: the author took them for a while for display from under police supervision, where he hurried to return them at the end of the play with the assistance of an official Pravdin, who took them into state custody with their villages. These unfunny people, conceiving criminal things, are wise and cunning in the same place, but, as people are stupid and confused, besides, they are evil to self-forgetfulness, they themselves get stuck and drown each other in the mud of their own intrigues. This is what comics is built on. Undergrowth. Stupidity, deceit, anger, crime are not at all funny in themselves; only stupid deceit that has fallen into its own nets is funny, malicious stupidity that deceives itself and does no harm to anyone is funny. undergrowth- a comedy not of persons, but of positions. Her faces are comical, but not funny, comical as roles, and not at all funny as people. They can amuse when you see them on the stage, but disturb and upset when you meet them outside the theater, at home or in society. Fonvizin made sadly bad and stupid people play funny, funny and often smart roles. In this subtle distinction of people And roles his artistic skill Undergrowth; it is the source of that strong impression that this play makes. The strength of the impression lies in the fact that it is composed of two opposite elements: laughter in the theater is replaced by heavy reflection upon leaving it. While the roles are being played out, the viewer laughs at the positions of outwitting and self-punishing stupidity. But then the game ended, the actors left, and the curtain fell - the laughter ended. The amusing positions of evil people have passed, but people remain, and, having escaped from the stuffy haze of electric light into the piercing freshness of street darkness, the viewer with a wounded heart recalls that these people have remained and he will meet them again before they fall into new positions they deserve, and he, the spectator, will get entangled with them in their dark deeds, and they will be able to punish him for this before they have time to punish themselves for their own outwitted evil stupidity.

IN Undergrowth the viewer is shown a wealthy noble family of Catherine's time in an unimaginably chaotic state. All concepts here are turned upside down and distorted; all feelings are turned inside out; there is not a single reasonable and conscientious attitude left; in everything there is oppression and arbitrariness, lies and deceit and a circular, total misunderstanding. Who is stronger, oppresses; whoever is weaker lies and deceives, and neither one nor the other understand why they oppress, lie and deceive, and no one even wants to think why they do not understand this. The wife-mistress, contrary to law and nature, oppresses her husband, not being smarter than him, and turns over everyone, i.e. everything turns upside down, being much more impudent than him. She is the only person in the house, all the others are impersonal pronouns, and when they are asked who they are, they timidly answer: "I am my wife's husband, and I am my sister's brother, and I am my mother's son." She does not put a penny on her husband's opinion and, complaining about the Lord, swears that her husband looks at everything through her eyes. She orders a caftan for her serf, who does not know how to sew, and rages, indignant at why he does not sew like a real tailor. From morning to evening, she does not give rest to either her tongue or her hands, either swearing or fighting: "That's how the house is kept," in her words. And this is how he holds up. She loves her son with the love of a dog for her puppies, as she herself proudly characterizes her love, encourages in her son disrespect for his father, and the son, a 16-year-old kid, pays his mother for such love with the rudeness of cattle. She allows her son to overeat to stomach anguish and is sure that she is raising him, as parental duty commands. Sacredly keeping the testament of her great father voivode Skotinin, who died of starvation on a chest with money and shouted at the reminder of the teachings of children: "Do not be the Skotinin who wants to learn something", the daughter, faithful to family traditions, hates science to rage, but stupidly teaches son for service and light, repeating to him: "Live for a century, learn for a century," and at the same time justifies his educational disgust with an untidy allusion to the ultimate goal of education, which she believes: you understand that you yourself will cock the children. The dearest of Mitrofan's teachers, the German coachman Vralman, who contracted to teach all the sciences, teaches absolutely nothing and cannot teach, because he himself knows nothing, even interferes with teaching others, justifying his pedagogy to his mother by the fact that her son's little head is much weaker than his belly, and even it does not withstand excessive stuffing; and for this consideration, accessible to the motherly-simple mind, Vralman is the only person in the house with whom the hostess treats decently, even with respect that is within her power. Having robbed everything from her peasants, Mrs. Prostakova mournfully wonders how she can’t rip anything off from them - such a disaster! She boasts that she has sheltered an orphan relative with means, and surreptitiously robs her. The benefactor wants to place this orphan Sophia for her brother without her asking, and he is not averse to this, not because he likes the “girl”, but because in her villages there are excellent pigs, to which he has a “mortal hunt”. She does not want to believe that her terrible uncle Sophia, whom she recognized as dead only because she had been commemorating him in church for the repose of her soul for several years, is resurrected, and is tearing and thrashing, ready to scratch out the eyes of anyone who tells her that he did not die. But the tyrant-woman is a terrible coward and subservient to any force with which she does not hope to cope - before the rich uncle Starodum, wanting to arrange for her brother's bride, who has accidentally become rich, for her son; but when they refuse her, she decides to forcibly marry her to her son by deceit, i.e. involve the church itself in its godless lawlessness. Reason, conscience, honor, shame, decency, fear of God and human - all the foundations and bonds public order they burn in this prostakov-skotininsky hell, where the devil is the mistress of the house herself, as Starodum calls her, and when she finally got caught, when all her unholy web was torn apart by the broom of the law, she, throwing herself on her knees before his guardian, sings her ugly tragedy, though not Hamlet's, but Tartuffe's epilogue in its nee edition: "Oh, I'm a dog's daughter! What have I done!" But this was a momentary confusion, if there was no pretense: as soon as she was forgiven, she remembered herself, became herself again, and her first thought was to flog the whole household to death for her failure, and when she was noticed that no one was free to tyrannize, she immortalized herself with the famous objection:

Not free! The nobleman, when he wants, and the servants are not free to flog! But why have we been given a decree on the freedom of the nobility?

That's the whole point. "Mistress of interpreting decrees!" - we will repeat after Starodum. It's all about the last words of Mrs. Prostakova; in them the whole meaning of the drama and the whole drama in them. Everything else is her stage or literary setting, nothing more; everything that precedes these words is their dramatic prologue; everything that follows them is their dramatic epilogue. Yes, Mrs. Prostakova is a master at interpreting decrees. She wanted to say that the law justifies her iniquity. She said nonsense, and this nonsense is the whole point Undergrowth; without her it would have been a comedy of nonsense. It is only necessary to destroy the signs of surprise and the question in the words of Mrs. Prostakova, to shift her somewhat pathetic speech, caused by the anxious state of the interpreter, into simple logical language, and then her unfavorable logic will be clearly indicated. The decree on the freedom of the nobility was given so that the nobleman was free to flog his servants when he wanted. Mrs. Prostakova, as a direct, naive lady, understood legal provisions only in concrete, practical applications, which in her words is the right of arbitrary section of serf servants. Raising this detail to its principle, we find that the decree on the freedom of the nobility was given to the rights of the nobles and nothing but rights, i.e. he did not assign any duties to the nobles, according to the interpretation of Mrs. Prostakova. Rights without duties are a legal absurdity, as a consequence without a cause - a logical absurdity; an estate with only rights without duties is a political impossibility, and impossibility cannot exist. Mrs. Prostyakova imagined the Russian nobility to be such an impossibility; she took it and pronounced the death sentence on the estate, which at that time was not at all going to die and is still alive. That was her nonsense. But the fact is that when this famous decree of Peter III was issued, very many of the Russian nobles raised their hands to their class, understood it in the same way as Mrs. Prostakova, who came from the "great and ancient" family of Skotinins, as she calls it her brother himself, Taras Skotinin himself, according to his own assurance, "is not the last of his kind." I can’t understand why Fonvizin allowed Starodum and Pravdin, in a conversation with Skotinin, to tease the antiquity of the Skotinin family and tempt the genealogical pride of the simpleton Skotinin with a hint that his ancestor, perhaps even older than Adam, “was created even on the sixth day, but a little earlier Adam" that Sofya is not a couple of Skotinin because she is a noblewoman: after all, the comedy itself testifies that Skotinin had a village, peasants, was the son of a governor, which means that he was also a nobleman, even ranked according to the table of ranks as "the best senior nobility in all virtues and advantages," and therefore his ancestor could not have been created at the same time as the quadrupeds. How did the Russian nobles of the last century let down Fonvizin, who himself was a nobleman, such an awkward hint? You can joke as much as you like about the jurisprudence of Mrs. Prostakova, about the mind of Mr. Skotinin, but not about their ancestors: a joke about Skotinin's genealogy, moreover, with the participation of biblical legends, on the part of Starodum and Pravdin, i.e. Fonvizin, was a dangerous, double-edged weapon; it is reminiscent of Kuteikin's comedy, all built on a parody of biblical terms and texts - an unpleasant and unreliable comic device, hardly able to amuse anyone. This needs to be well explained to the youth who read undergrowth, and interpret in the sense that here Fonvizin did not joke about either the ancestors or the texts, but only in his own way denounced people who abused both. This joke can be excused, if not by a passion for their own wit, then indignation at the fact that the Skotinins justified their noble origin too little and came under the cruel assessment of the same Starodum, who said: "A nobleman, unworthy of being a nobleman, I know nothing more mean in the world." The indignation of the comedian is quite understandable: he could not help but understand all the lies and danger of the view that many nobles of his time adopted on the decree on the freedom of the nobility, understanding it, as it was interpreted in the school of prostakov's jurisprudence. This interpretation was false and dangerous, threatening to cloud the legal meaning and destroy the political position of the leading class of Russian society. The freedom of the nobility under the decree of 1762 was understood by many as the dismissal of the estate from all social class rights. It was fatal mistake, a glaring misunderstanding. The totality of state duties that lay on the nobility as an estate constituted what was called his service the state. The famous manifesto of February 18, 1762 stated that the nobles who were on military or civil service, may continue it or retire at will, however, with some restrictions. The law did not say a word about any new rights over serfs, about any section of servants; on the contrary, some obligations that remained on the class were directly and persistently stipulated, among other things, compulsory education established by Peter the Great: "So that no one would dare to raise their children under our heavy anger without teaching the sciences worthy of the noble nobility." At the end of the decree, politely expressed hope, that the nobility will not shy away from service, but enter into it with zeal, no less and diligently teach their children decent sciences, but, however, it is immediately added quite angrily that those nobles who will not fulfill both of these duties, as people negligent about the common good, commanded to all loyal subjects "to despise and destroy" and not to endure in public meetings. How else could it be said more clearly than this, and where liberty, complete dismissal from compulsory service? The law abolished, and even then with restrictions, only the mandatory term of service (at least 25 years), established by decree of 1736. The nobles of the Prostakov mind were misled by the fact that the law did not directly order to serve, which was not necessary, but only threatened with punishment for evading service, which was not unnecessarily. But the threat of the law by punishment for an act is an indirect prohibition of the act. This is the legal logic that requires that the threatening punishment follows from the forbidden act, as the effect follows from its cause. The decree of February 18 canceled only the investigation, and the prostakov lawyers thought that the cause had been cancelled. They fell into the same error as we would if, after reading the injunction that thieves should not be tolerated in society, they thought that theft was allowed, but the servants were forbidden to take thieves into the house when they called. These lawyers understood too literally not only the words, but also the omissions of the law, and the law, wishing to speak politely, solemnly announced that it would grant liberty and freedom to “the entire Russian noble nobility,” said more pleasant things than it wanted to say, and tried to soften as much as possible something that was unpleasant to be reminded of. The law said: be so kind, serve and teach your children, but by the way, whoever does not do either one or the other will be expelled from society. Many in the Russian society of the last century did not understand this delicate appeal of the law to the public conscience, because they received insufficiently lenient civic education. They were accustomed to the simple, somewhat soldierly language of Petrine legislation, which liked to speak with sticks, lashes, the gallows and a bullet, promised to rip the nostrils of the criminal and send him to hard labor, or even deprive him of his very stomach and cut off his head to execute, or mercilessly arquebus (shoot). These people understood duty when it was carved in bloody smudges on living skin, and not written in human speech in human conscience. Such realism of legal thinking prevented thinkers from penetrating the meaning of the law, which, for neglect of the common good, threatened that the negligent "below our court, the arrival or in public meetings and celebrations will not be tolerated": no sticks, no lashes, but only the closing of courtiers and public doors! There was a major legal misunderstanding. The satire of that time revealed its source: it is too loose an appetite for arbitrariness. She portrayed a county nobleman who writes to his son about the decree on February 18: “They say that the nobles were given freedom; but the devil heard it, God forgive me, what freedom! ". The thought of this lawyer went even further than that of the Prostakovs, demanding not only a certificate of discharge from estate duty, but also a patent for the estate privilege of lawlessness.

So, a significant part of the nobility in the last century did not understand the historically established position of their estate, and the undergrowth, Fonvizinsky undergrowth Mitrofan, was a victim of this misunderstanding. Fonvizin's comedy inseparably connected both of these words so that Mitrofan became a household name, and undergrowth - his own: undergrowth is a synonym for Mitrofan, and Mitrofan is a synonym for a stupid ignoramus and mother's minion. undergrowth Fonvizin is a caricature, but not so much a stage caricature as an everyday one: his upbringing disfigured him more than the comedy laughed at. The historical prototype of this caricature was the rank, in which there is as little funny as there is little of this in the rank of a high school student. In the language of ancient Rus', undergrowth- a teenager under 15 years old, a noble undergrowth - a teenager who "kept pace" in the sovereign's military service and became novice, "grown up man", as soon as he kept up with the service, i.e. reached the age of 15. The title of noble undergrowth is a whole state institution, a whole page from the history of Russian law. Legislation and the government carefully arranged the position of the undersized, which is understandable: it was a growing military reserve. In the main military administration, in the Discharge Moscow Order, they kept lists of them with the designation of the years of each, in order to know the annual draft contingent; the order of their review and analysis was established, according to which those who were in time were written to the service, in which one they were fit, the order put them on their old father's or new estates, etc. With this order, it was difficult, and unprofitable, for a minor, upon reaching draft age, to stay at home for a long time: local and monetary salaries were assigned, additions were made to the first "new" salaries only for active service or proven serviceworthiness, "who was worth what", and "beating from service", it was possible not only not to get a new estate, but also to lose your father's. There were also in the 17th century. undergrowths, "who were in time for service, but did not serve services" and did not appear at the reviews, "growled", as they said then about such non-rumors. Since the reign of Peter the Great, this service "pickle" of noble undergrowth has been intensifying more and more for various reasons: service in the new regular army has become incomparably harder than before; moreover, the law of January 20, 1714 required compulsory education from noble children in order to prepare for service; on the other hand, local ownership became hereditary, and endowing noviks with local salaries ceased. Thus, the hardships of compulsory service increased at the same time as the material motivation for it weakened. "Sleeping" from school and service became a chronic ailment of the nobility, which did not succumb to the strict decrees of Peter I and his successors on the appearance of minors at reviews with threats of a whip, fines, "defamation", the irrevocable unsubscribing of estates to the treasury for disobedience. Pososhkov assures us that in his time "many multitudes" of nobles lived for their centuries, grew old, lived in the villages, but did not even go to the service with one foot. The nobles used the income from the lands and serfs granted to the estate for service, and as both of them strengthened behind the estate, they more and more zealously evaded service. These deviations expressed the same unscrupulous attitude towards class duty, which sounded so rude in the words heard by the same Pososhkov from many noblemen: "God grant that the great sovereign serve, but do not take out the sabers from the scabbard." Such an attitude towards class duties to the state and society brought up “lazybones” among the nobility, about whom Pososhkov venomously remarked: “At home, he is terrible for his neighbors, like a lion, but in the service he is worse than a goat.” This very view of the state and civic duties of the estate turned the undergrowth of the nobility, who was in time for service, into a rude and stupid ignoramus and lazy person, who avoided school and service in every possible way.

Such a converted undergrowth is Fonvizinsky Mitrofan, a very stable and tenacious type in Russian society, who survived the very legislation on undergrowth, who knew how to "suspend" not only children, according to the prediction of his mother, Mrs. Prostakova, but also granddaughters of "the times of the latest Mitrofans", as Pushkin put it . Mitrofan Fonvizin will soon be 16 years old; but he is still among the minors: according to the law of 1736, the period of study (that is, the title) of the minor was extended to 20 years. Mitrofan, due to the condition of his parents, studies at home, and not at school: the same law allowed undergrowth with means to be brought up at home. Mitrofan has been studying for four years now, and very badly: according to the hour book he barely wanders with a pointer in his hand, and then only under the dictation of the teacher, deacon Kuteikin, in arithmetic "he did not learn anything" from the retired sergeant Tsyfirkin, but "in French and all sciences "He is not taught at all by the teacher himself, a former coachman, the German Vralman, dearly hired to teach these" all sciences ". But the mother is very pleased with this last teacher, who "does not captivate the child," and with the success of her "child," who, in her words, already understands so much that he himself will "cock up" the children. She has a natural, family skotininsky aversion to learning. "People live and lived without science," she impressively declares to Starodum, remembering the testament of her father, who said: "Don't be that Skotinin, who wants to learn something." But she, too, knows that “now the age is different,” and, shaking him, with fussy annoyance, she prepares her son “for people”: go to St. Petersburg, an unlearned one - they will say, a fool. She pampers her son, "while he is still undergrowth"; but she is afraid of the service into which, "God forbid," he will have to enter in ten years. The demands of society and service imposed on these people the science they hated, and they hated it more sincerely. This was one of the tragicomic difficulties that these people created for themselves by not understanding their class position, which caused them so many Mitrofans; and in the position of the class there was a change that required full attention to itself.

In Fonvizin's comedy, consciously or unconsciously for its author and the first viewers, both these difficulties found artistic expression, and the misunderstanding of the turning point in the position of the Russian nobility that created them, which had a decisive influence on the further fate of this class, and through it on the whole of Russian society . Long prepared, this turning point came precisely from the moment the law was issued on February 18, 1762. For many centuries, the nobility bore the brunt of military service, protecting the fatherland from external enemies, forming the main armed force of the country. For this, the state gave into his hands great amount land, made it a landowning class, and in the XVII century. put at his disposal on serfdom and the peasant population of his lands. It was a great national sacrifice: in the year of the first performance Undergrowth(1782) the nobility accounted for more than half (53%) of the entire peasant population in the old Great Russian regions of the state - more than half of the population whose labor mainly fed the state and national economy of Russia. Under Peter I, compulsory education was added to the compulsory service of the nobility on January 20, 1714 as a preparation for such a service. So a nobleman became a statesman, a service person from the moment he grew up to the opportunity to take a training pointer in his hands. According to Peter, the nobility was to become a guide to the Russian society of a new education, scientific knowledge, which was borrowed from the West. Meanwhile, military service was extended to other classes; total military service the nobility after Peter became less necessary to the state: in the regular army arranged by Peter, the nobility retained the importance of a trained officer reserve. Then the peaceful educational appointment, proposed for the nobility by the reformer, began to come forward more and more insistently. It was ready, waiting for the figures, and the fertile, peaceful field, working on which the nobility could render a new service to the fatherland, did not at all less than that, which it served on the military field. The serfs were poor and ruined, left in the absence of the landowners to the arbitrariness of tax collectors, elders, managers, clerks, whom the government itself likened to wolves. The landowner was then considered a natural patron and economic guardian of his peasants, and his presence was regarded as a boon for them. Therefore, for the state, a nobleman in the countryside became no less, if not more, needed than in the barracks. That is why, from the death of Peter, the hardships that lay on the nobility in the service were gradually eased, but in return, his duties in land ownership became more complicated. Since 1736, the indefinite military service of a nobleman was limited to a 25-year term, and in 1762, serving nobles were given the right to resign at their discretion. On the other hand, the landlords are responsible for the tax serviceability of their peasants, and then the obligation to feed them in lean years and lend them seeds for sowing. But even in the countryside the state needed an educated, intelligent and philanthropic landowner. Therefore, the government did not allow the slightest weakening of the educational duty of the nobility, by threatening to give ignoramuses as sailors without seniority, they drove the underage to state schools, established periodic examinations for those who were brought up at home, as well as at school, and provided significant advantages in the service of trained newcomers. The very obligation of the nobility to serve was considered not only as a means of equipping the army and navy with officers of the noble reserve, but also as an educational tool for the nobleman, to whom military service imparted, along with the military and a well-known civil bearing, knowledge of the world, humanity, hewed the Prostakovs and humanized the Skotinins, hammered in both of them, the joy of "the common good", "knowledge of political affairs," as the manifesto of February 18, 1762, expressed it, and encouraged parents to take care of home training children to state school and service, so that they do not appear in the capital as complete ignoramuses with the danger of becoming a laughingstock for their comrades. Even Mrs. Prostakova vividly felt this significance of the service. Because of what is she tearing herself up, fussing about the education of her son? She agrees with Vralman's opinion about the danger of stuffing a weak head with scientific food that is too much for her. "But what are you going to do? - she grieves, - a child, without learning, go to the same Petersburg - they will say a fool. There are a lot of smart people now; I'm afraid of them." And the Fonvizinsky brigadier persuades his wife to enroll their Ivanushka in the regiment: "Let him, serving in the regiment, gain his mind." It was necessary to overcome the stubborn aversion to science in the children of the nobility, against whom the decree of the Empress Anna of 1736 complained that they would rather join the servile court service than serve the state, run away from the sciences and thereby ruin themselves. In view of the danger of the savagery of the non-serving nobility, the government for a long time was afraid not only to abolish, but also to reduce the compulsory service of the class. In 1731, the Senate objected to the proposal of the Minich commission to establish a 25-year term of noble service with the right to shorten it under certain conditions with the consideration that wealthy nobles, taking advantage of these conditions, would never go into service of their own free will, but would live at home "in any idleness and laziness and without any good sciences and manners. It was necessary to wean the Russian Vralmanov's students from the absurd opinion of their teacher, expressed by him so ingenuously: "As if a Russian nobleman could no longer advance in the world without a Russian diploma!" And so, in 1762, the government decided that stubbornness had been broken, and in a manifesto on February 18, it solemnly announced that the forced service of the nobility "exterminated rudeness in those who are negligent about the common good, ignorance has changed into common sense, noble thoughts have rooted in the hearts of all true Russian patriots boundless loyalty and love to us, great zeal and excellent zeal for our service. But the legislator knew the limits of this "boundless fidelity and excellent jealousy" and therefore concluded the "liberty and freedom" granted to the class in known conditions, which boiled down to the requirement that the estate, in good conscience, continue to do what it had hitherto done under duress. Means, the compulsory urgency of the 25-year service was replaced by the law with its moral obligation, from a duty prescribed by law, he turned it into a requirement of state decency or civic duty, the failure to fulfill which is punished by a corresponding punishment - expulsion from a decent society; so the educational service was confirmed strictly.

The further fate of the estate was foreordained by the legislation very benevolently and quite deliberately. The nobility was taken out of the capital's barracks and offices to the provinces to work in a new field. By the law of February 18, his official service was lightened to such an extent that it did not interfere with this activity as a duty and kept it so that it helped this activity as an educational tool. In this provincial field, the nobility had a double job - in the countryside and in the city. In the countryside, he had to take care of the abandoned class, the peasantry, more than half which it owned on serfdom and which accounted for almost 9/10 of the entire population of the state, which endured all the military and financial burdens of the terrible reform, along with recruits for the Poltava and Kunersdorf fields, on request gave the last money to the Bironov tax collectors and even without request and outfit put such a recruit of science as Lomonosov. The nobility had to use their knowledge and example to accustom this class to sobriety, to proper work, to the productive use of their forces, to the economical use of the gifts of nature, to skillful housekeeping, to the consciousness of their civic duty, to an understanding of their rights and obligations. By this, the noble class would justify - no, would atone for the historical sin of possessing serf souls. Such a sin was usually created by conquest, and the Russian nobility did not conquer their peasants, and it was all the more necessary for them to prove that their power was not a violation of historical justice. Another matter lay before the nobility in the city. When undergrowth first appeared on the scene, the reform of provincial institutions was in full swing, giving the nobility a predominant role in local government and court. As an estate disciplined and accustomed to social activity by the very nature of its compulsory service, it could become the leader of other classes of local society, accustoming them to independence and self-control, to friendly teamwork, from which they have lost the habit, isolated by special estate rights and duties, in a word , could form trained cadres of local self-government, as before it gave the army a trained officer reserve.

For both activities, urban as well as rural, serious and careful preparation was required, which had to be fought with great difficulties. First of all, it was necessary to stock up on the means delivered by education and science. The nobility had to show on its own to other classes of society what means education provides for a hostel, when it becomes the same need for spiritual everyday life, which is food in physical everyday life, and does not serve only as a racing obstacle over which they jump over to get high ranks and profitable places. , or a means of acquiring a high-society gloss, as a cosmetic aid to a hairdressing device.

It could be feared whether the Russian nobility would be able to choose from the stock of knowledge, ideas, and views that was in the European circulation what they needed for household chores, and not what could be pleasantly filled with idle idleness. Fear was supported by news coming from abroad about Russian young people sent there to science, who were more willing to visit European austeria and "redoubts" (gambling houses) than academies and other schools, and astonished the European police with "disgraceful deeds". Another danger threatened: the nobility could bring their old habitual view of civil service as "feeding from work" to the new provincial institutions. The nobles of the last century treated this service with disdain, but did not disdain it for the sake of its "bait" conveniences and even used it as a means to evade military service. Pososhkov at one time bitterly complained about the nobles of the “young people” who “live in business instead of military affairs,” and learn “how to make money and shirk service.”

The government began to take care of the training of the nobility for civil service before military service was removed from the estate. According to the multi-subject program of the gentry cadet corps opened in 1731, cadets were to study, among other things, rhetoric, geography, history, heraldry, jurisprudence, and morality. Educated Russian people of that time, for example Tatishchev (in the Conversation about the benefits of sciences and schools and in Spiritual), persistently insisted that the Russian gentry, after confessing their faith, first of all needed knowledge of civil laws and the state of their own fatherland, Russian geography and history. Of course, under Catherine II, "civil education", which would educate not so much scientists as citizens, became even higher in the plans of the government. According to Betsky’s plan, the undergrowth of the noble corps was to emerge from the transformed gentry corps as a citizen-warrior, who knew both military and civil affairs, capable of conducting business both in the camp and in the Senate, in short, an equally fit belli domique husband.

It would be a great thing if the plan succeeded and such versatile men would come from among Ivanushki and Mitrofanushki. It so happened that in the same autumn when the undergrowth, Petersburg took place two important events: a commission was drawn up on the establishment of public schools in Russia and a monument to Peter the Great was unveiled. Significant coincidence! If the nobility followed the path that Peter I indicated to them, the ode of that century could, taking the opportunity, depict how a reformer, having left his Peter and Paul tomb and "seeing himself in the free air" - the expression of Catherine II in a letter to Grimm about opening of the monument, - opens his long closed mouth to say: Now you are letting go. But not an ode came out, but a comedy to warn the class against the danger of not falling on the path indicated to it. undergrowth gives such a warning in sharp, impressive forms, understandable even to an audience unaccustomed to comic subtleties; even the brother of Mrs. Prostakova, Taras Skotinin himself, understood him, saying: "Yes, that way, any Skotinin can fall under guardianship." In the estate of Mrs. Prostakova, figuratively, for example, the further fate of that part of the nobility, which thought and understood its position in a simple way, was played out. The estate had to prepare for the domestic and patriotic role of the head of local government and society, and Ms. Prostakova says: “But what a joy it is to learn? The class was called to patronage and philanthropic activity in the serf village, and Ms. Prostakova, seeing that the governor’s official had taken away from her the power to run amok in the house, exclaims in comic anguish: “Where am I fit, when in my house there are no hands and will for me ?" But gentlemen Prostakov and guardianship. Nothing to them!

IN Undergrowth bad people of the old school are placed directly against the new ideas embodied in the pale virtuous figures of Starodum, Pravdin and others who came to tell those people that times have changed, that it is necessary to educate, think and act differently than they used to do, which is dishonorable for a nobleman do nothing, "when he has so much to do, there are people to help, there is a fatherland to serve." But the old people did not want to understand the new requirements of the time and their position, and the law is ready to lay its heavy hand on them. What was presented on the stage was what really threatened: the comedy wanted to give a strict lesson to slow-witted people, so as not to become an ominous prophecy for them.

Klyuchevsky Vasily Osipovich (1841 - 1911). Russian historian, academician (1900), honorary academician (1908) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Instead of an epigraph: “The mind, since it is just a mind, is the most trifle. With fugitive minds we see bad husbands, bad fathers, bad citizens. Good manners gives him a direct price. Without it, a smart person is a monster. It is immeasurably higher than all the fluency of the mind. (D.I. Fonvizin) http://bookmix.ru/quotes/index.phtml?id=19608

“Before that, I had just been in America,” Metropolitan Anthony of Surozhsky once said, “and the power of the earth and nature struck me there: how can this land to throw out LIFE with force in the form of trees, grass, vast spaces full of natural life. And when he [an ecologist] asked me about the tree, I told him that for me the tree is an expression of the life force of the earth. But then I became interested and decided I asked one of our young parishioners (she is not a genius, but not a fool either): “What is a tree?” Her face lit up, and she told me: “A tree is poetry!” After that, I asked a cultured young man with a good education (both Russian and English university, theological): "What is a tree?" He replied: "Building materials!"... He saw nothing in the tree except what can be made of it; like the hero of Dickens, who looked at a herd of sheep and said: walking chops... He saw nothing else; he saw in living beings only meat, which he will eat when they are dead..." (hence http://www.metropolit-anthony.orc.ru/pered3/pb_315.htm)

“The mind, if it’s just a mind, is the most trifle ... Good morality gives it a direct price. Without it, a smart person is a monster” ... “You are a worshiper of the flesh, because you introduce a person who has no mind,” the ancient Greek Christian intelligentsia Apollinaria reproached ( see), and in the end she sang "Joy came to the whole world with the Cross" and immediately merged the gophers into oblivion ... they say, everything is so ... for a red word, but in reality, joy came to me alone. She lived with such a mind ... So, as a result, the Russian Tikhon Zadonsky used to say: “Now there is almost no true Piety, now there is only hypocrisy,” and Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin explained: “Um, if he just has a mind, the most trifle ... Direct good manners give him a price. Without it, a smart person is a monster.

“Until now, a person thought with his whole body to the tips of his nails; from now on, only his brain thinks. Only now Freud, in fact, gets the subject of his psychology, and Scheler the subject of his anthropology, and this subject is a sick person, cut off from the world and bifurcating between spirit and instincts. And as long as we believe that this sick person is a person par excellence, that is, a "normal" person and a person "in general", we will not be able to heal him. /Martin Buber./ (http://krotov.info/library/02_b/bub/er_07.htm)

U.S. Marine Corps sadence - "Got a Lot of Motivation"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQhS2rX5MgQ

That fellow, who sees with his flesh not only a personal walking cucumber, but also the cosmos of God alone for all of us ... "for you who revere my name, the Sun of righteousness will rise and healing in its rays ..." (Mal. 4, 2) ( more fully) Earth and Sky are our body (see, our Universal organism! In all material things, God is like the sun in the rays! (see)

Sergey Trofimov - Who we were for the Motherland

On Morality and Russian Culture Klyuchevsky Vasily Osipovich

Undergrowth Fonvizin (Experience of historical explanation of the educational play)

Undergrowth Fonvizin

(Experience of historical explanation of educational play)

The good uncle Starodum in the Prostakovs' estate, finding his well-behaved niece Sophia reading Fenelon's treatise on the education of girls, said to her:

- Fine. I do not know such a book; but read it, read it! Whoever wrote Telemachus will not corrupt morals with his pen.

Can such a judgment be applied to the Undergrowth itself? It is difficult for a modern educator or educator to keep track of the stream of impressions that their pupils and pupils absorb while reading this play. Can they, with the gullibility of Uncle Starodum, say to these impressionable readers, seeing in their hands the “Undergrowth”: “well, read it, read it: the author, who through the mouth of Uncle Starodum expresses such beautiful worldly rules, cannot corrupt morals with his pen.” Have a heart, have a soul, and you will be a man at all times. The mind, if it is just a mind, is the most trifle; good manners give a direct price to the mind. The main goal of all human knowledge is good manners. These maxims have been repeated for more than a hundred years since the first performance of The Undergrowth, and although they have the appearance of moralizing borrowed from children's copybooks, they have not yet become boring, have not become cloying in spite of the apt observation of the same Starodum that “the hourly use of some beautiful words is so we are introduced to them by the fact that, pronouncing them, a person no longer thinks anything, feels nothing. But, besides the wonderful thoughts and feelings of Starodum, Pravdin, Sofya, who teach directly with their simple, open meaning, there are still living faces in comedy with their passions, intrigues and vices that put them in complex, confusing situations. The moral meaning of these dramatic persons and positions is not recited loudly on the stage, not even whispered from the prompter's booth, but remains behind the scenes by a hidden director directing the course of the drama, the words and actions of the characters. Is it possible to guarantee that the eye of a receptive young observer will get to this meaning of the worldly relations played out before him and this effort will produce a proper educational effect on him, deliver healthy food to his aesthetic sensation and moral feeling? Shouldn't one stand beside such a reader or viewer of the "Undergrowth" with a cautious commentary, become an intelligible, but not intrusive prompter?

"Undergrowth" is included in the educational anthology of Russian literature and has not yet been removed from the theatrical repertoire. It is usually given during the winter holidays, and when it appears on the poster, adults say: this is a performance for high school and high school students. But adults themselves willingly follow their teenagers under the plausible guise of the duty of guides and do not get bored with the performance, they even cheerfully echo the noisy laughter of their underage neighbors and neighbors.

It can be safely said that The Undergrowth has not yet lost much of its former artistic power over either the reader or the spectator, despite its naive dramatic structure, which at every step reveals the threads with which the play is sewn, neither into an outdated language, nor on the dilapidated stage conventions of the Catherine theatre, despite even the fragrant morality of the optimists of the last century poured into the play. These shortcomings are covered with a special taste that comedy has acquired from time to time and which Fonvizin's contemporaries did not feel in it. These latter recognized in her characters their good or bad acquaintances; the scene made them laugh, indignant or upset, presenting to them in an artistic generalization what they encountered around them and even in themselves in the concrete coarseness of life, what was part of their environment and the structure of their life, even in their own inner being, and sincere the audience, probably with sorrow, repeated to themselves the good-natured and intelligent exclamation of Prostakov the father: “We are good!” We live in a different environment and in a different way of life; the same vices in us are revealed differently. Now around us we do not see either the Prostakovs or the Skotinins, at least with their the then guises and manners; we have the right not to recognize ourselves in these unpleasant figures. Comedy convinces us with our own eyes that such monsters could exist and once really existed, reveals them to us in their true primitive form, and this discovery makes us appreciate even more the artistic play that immortalized them. In our eyes, the play has lost the freshness of novelty and modernity, but has acquired the interest of an artistic monument of antiquity, showing what concepts and habits fertilize the cultural soil on which we walk and whose cereals we feed on. This historical interest could not be noticed in the comedy by the contemporaries of its author: watching it, they did not see us, their grandchildren; we see them through it, our grandfathers. What is funny about The Undergrowth, and does the same thing make different ages laugh in it? The youth most of all laugh, of course, at Mitrofan, the hero of the drama, an inexhaustible object of laughter, a common name for ridiculous underage stupidity and learning ignorance. But let it be allowed to intercede a little for Mitrofan: he is too ridiculed. True, he is ridiculous, but not always and even very rarely, precisely only in the best moments of his life, which are found on him very infrequently. In comedy, he does two things: thinks, to extricate himself from the difficulties in which his mother's zoological love puts him, and arrives, expressing their usual feelings in actions. Only his thoughts are funny, and his actions are not at all. According to the author, he is a fool and should reason like a fool. There is nothing funny here; it is a sin to laugh at a fool, and whoever does this becomes a worthy object of his own laughter. However, in reality, Mitrofan thinks in his own resourceful and clever way, only dishonestly and therefore sometimes inappropriately, he thinks not with the aim of finding out the truth or finding a direct path for his actions, but only in order to get out of one trouble, and therefore immediately falls into another, than punishes himself for the sophistical deceit of his thought. This is self-punishment and causes well-deserved laughter. He is amusing when, after overeating on the eve and in order to avoid the trouble of studying, he tries to exaggerate the extent and bad consequences of his gluttony, even fawning over his mother in order to pity her; but, dodging the teacher, he exposes himself to the danger of falling into the hands of a doctor, who, of course, will put him on a diet, and in order to deflect this new attack from himself, he cleverly answers the proposal of his mother, who was frightened of his illness, to send for a doctor: “No, no , mother, I'd rather get well myself, ”and runs away to the dovecote. He is very amusing with his original theory of grammar, with his very briskly and cleverly invented doctrine of the door of the noun and adjective, for which invention smart adults who examined him solemnly, with Mitrofanovsky wit, award him the title of fool. But Mitrofan's feelings and actions directed by them are not at all funny, but only disgusting. What's funny about the disgusting pity that got the gorged 16-year-old varmint - in his heavy animal dream - at the sight of his mother, tired of beating his father? There is nothing funny in the famous scene of Mitrofan’s teaching, in this incomparable, desolately sad quartet of poor teachers, who cannot teach anything, mothers, in the presence of a student son with knitting in his hands, cursing over learning, and a son who is eager to marry, in the presence of his mother cursing over by your teachers? If a modern teacher does not set his class in such a way that he does not laugh when reading this scene, it means that such a teacher does not master his class well, and for him to be able to share such laughter himself, it’s scary to even think about it. For adults, Mitrofan is not at all funny; at least it is very dangerous to laugh at him, for the Mitrofanov breed takes revenge with its fertility. Adults, before making fun of Mitrofan's stupidity or vulgarity, let them imagine their present or future nursery from the depths of the box, or look at their chicks sitting right there on the front chairs, and the swept smile will instantly fly off the frivolously cheerful face. Just as Mitrofan punishes himself for his quick-witted stupidity with well-deserved misfortunes, so the mocking modern spectator of the stage Mitrofan can eventually punish himself for premature laughter not with theatrical, but with real, worldly and very bitter tears. I repeat, one must carefully laugh at Mitrofan, because Mitrofans are not very funny and, moreover, are very vindictive, and they take revenge with the uncontrollable multiplication and elusive insight of their breed, akin to insects or microbes.

Yes, I don’t know who is funny in the Undergrowth. Mr. Prostakov? He is only an unintelligent, completely helpless poor fellow, not without the conscientious sensitivity and directness of a holy fool, but without a drop of will and with an excess of cowardice, pitiful to tears, which makes him faint of heart even before his son. Taras Skotinin is also not very comical: in a man who described himself as a well-known pet, to whom his sister herself tenderly said in the eyes that he needs a good pig more than his wife, for whom a pigsty replaces both the temple of sciences and the hearth - what is comical in this noble Russian nobleman, who, from an educational competition with his beloved animals, has become civilized to all fours? Isn't the mistress of the house herself, Mrs. Prostakova, nee Skotinina, comical? This face in a comedy, unusually well conceived psychologically and excellently sustained dramatically: in the course of all five acts of the play, with strong-browed, truly bestial patience, she never blinked from that cruel physiognomy that the ruthless artist ordered her to keep during the entire leisurely session, while he was painting portrait from her. On the other hand, she is doubly uncomical: she is stupid and cowardly, that is, pathetic, according to her husband, like Prostakov, godless and inhuman, that is, disgusting, according to her brother, like Skotinina. She is not at all conducive to laughter; on the contrary, at the mere sight of this outrageous mischievous woman, not only her downtrodden husband, but also the modern viewer, protected from her for a century, begins to blur in the eyes and faith in a person, in her neighbor, begins to waver.

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 sharply set off their dark physiognomies with their light contrast. They fulfill a role in drama similar to that of screens, pots of flowers, and other devices in a photographic office that are designed to regulate light and perspective. Such they should be according to the then dramatic theory; perhaps they were also according to the plan of the author of the comedy; but they do not seem quite like that to the modern viewer, who does not forget that he sees before him the Russian society of the last century. 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 photographs. They hurriedly repeated and, stammering, read to those around them new feelings and rules, which they somehow adapted to their inner being, as they adjusted foreign wigs to their bristly heads; but these feelings and rules stuck as mechanically to their home-grown, natural concepts and habits as those wigs to their heads. They were walking, but still lifeless schemes of a new, good morality, which they put on themselves like a mask. Time, effort and experience were needed to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations, so that this moralistic mask could grow into their dull faces and become their living moral physiognomy. Where, for example, was Fonvizin to take a living, well-bred niece Sofya, when such nieces, only 15 years before the appearance of the "Undergrowth", were only still projected by Uncle Betsky in various pedagogical reports and inscriptions, when the educational societies established for this purpose for noble and petty-bourgeois girls according to his the first test examples of the new good manners were molded to order, and these girls themselves, so carefully conceived pedagogically, like our Sophia, were only just sitting down to read Fenelon's and other treatises on their own upbringing? The artist could create only from the material prepared by the teacher, and Sofya came out of him as a freshly made doll of good manners, from which the dampness of the pedagogical workshop still breathes. Thus, Fonvizin remained an artist and, in the visible shortcomings of his comedy, did not betray the artistic truth in his very caricatures: he could not make living faces from the walking dead or foggy ghosts, but the bright faces depicted by him, without becoming alive, remain real faces, from life taken by phenomena.

And are they as lifeless as they are used to presenting them? As beginners in their role, they still stumble, stumble, repeating lessons barely completed from La Bruyère, Duclos, Nakaz and other textbooks of public and private morality of that time; but as new converts they are a little arrogant and overzealous. They themselves have not yet seen enough of their new moral attire, they speak so cheekily, self-confidently and self-satisfiedly, they savor their own academic virtue with such taste that they forget where they are, with whom they are dealing, and therefore sometimes get into a mess, which intensifies the comedy of the drama. Starodum, who interprets the benefits of geography to Madame Prostakova by saying that on a trip with geography you know where you are going, is right, no less and no more lively face than his interlocutor, who, with her usual decisiveness and rather well-read, objects to him with a subtle consideration borrowed from one Voltaire's story: “Yes, what are cab drivers for? It's their business." Clever, educated people laugh so complacently at this society of rude or pathetic savages with whom they are visiting, even at such petty fools as they consider Mitrofan and Taras Skotinin - that the latter showed unusual vigilance when he asked, pointing to one of these noble guests, Sophia's groom: “Which of us is ridiculous? Ha, ha, ha!” The venerable Uncle Starodum himself is so playfully disposed that, at the sight of a brother and sister who had fought in the blood, to whose house he had just arrived, he could not help laughing and even testified to the hostess herself that he had never seen anything funnier in his life, for which he was deservedly interrupted by her remark that, sir, this is not at all funny. Throughout the first scene of the fifth act, the same uncle Starodum, who has grown rich by honest labor, and the official of the viceroy Pravdin importantly talk about how it is illegal to oppress their own kind by slavery, what a pleasure it is for sovereigns to own free souls, how flatterers distract sovereigns from the path of truth and trap their souls in their network, how a sovereign can make people good: one has only to show everyone that without good manners no one can go out to the people and get a place in the service, and "then everyone will find his own benefit to be good-natured and everyone will be good." These kind people, who discussed such serious subjects on the stage in front of the Russian public and invented such easy means to make all people kind, were sitting in one of the estates filled with serfs of the numerous Mrs. Prostakovs, nee Skotinins, one of which both of them could hardly cope with, yes and then with the use of weapons of an officer passing by with his team. Listening to these interlocutors, it is as if you are listening to a merry fairy tale that took them away from the reality surrounding them “to distant lands, to a distant kingdom”, where Mitrofan was brought by the cowgirl Khavronya, who taught him “stories”. This means that the faces of comedy, called upon to serve as formulas and models of good morals, are not devoid of comic liveliness.

All these are false notes not of comedy, but of life itself, played out in it. This comedy is an incomparable mirror. Fonvizin in it somehow managed to stand right in front of Russian reality, look at it simply, directly, point-blank, with eyes not armed with any glass, a look not refracted by any points of view, and reproduce it with the unconsciousness of artistic understanding. Drawing what he observed, he, as a proven artist, did not refuse to create; but this time, and where he hoped to create, he only copied. This happened because this time the poetic look of the author through what it seemed penetrated to what was really happening; The simple, sad truth of life, covered by mirages striking the eyes, suppressed playful fantasy, usually mistaken for creativity, and called into action the highest creative power of vision, which, behind the ghostly phenomena visible to everyone, is able to discern reality that no one notices. The glass that reaches the stars invisible to the naked eye is stronger than that which reflects the wandering lights that occupy idle spectators.

Fonvizin took the heroes of The Undergrowth straight from the whirlpool of life, and took what he found in, without any cultural coverings, and put them on stage with all the confusion of their relations, with all the sodom of their untidy instincts and interests. These heroes, snatched from the public mind for the amusement of the theatrical audience, turned out to be not at all funny, but simply intolerable in any well-organized society: the author took them for a while for display from under police supervision, where he hurried to return them at the end of the play with the assistance of an official Pravdin, who took them into state custody with their villages. These unfunny people, conceiving criminal things, are wise and cunning in the same place, but, as people are stupid and confused, besides, they are evil to self-forgetfulness, they themselves get stuck and drown each other in the mud of their own intrigues. This is what the comic "Undergrowth" is built on. Stupidity, deceit, anger, crime are not at all funny in themselves; only stupid deceit that has fallen into its own nets is funny, malicious stupidity that deceives itself and does no harm to anyone is funny. "Undergrowth" is a comedy not of persons, but of positions. Her faces are comical, but not funny, comical like roles, and not at all funny like people. They can amuse when you see them on the stage, but disturb and upset when you meet them outside the theater, at home or in society. Fonvizin forced sadly bad and stupid people to play amusingly cheerful and often clever roles. In this subtle distinction of people And roles the artistic skill of his "Undergrowth"; it is the source of that strong impression that this play makes. The strength of the impression lies in the fact that it is composed of two opposite elements: laughter in the theater is replaced by heavy reflection upon leaving it. While the roles are played out, the viewer laughs at the positions of the evil stupidity that outwitted and punished itself. But then the game ended, the actors left, and the curtain fell - the laughter ended. The amusing positions of evil people have passed, but people remain, and, having escaped from the stuffy haze of electric light into the piercing freshness of street darkness, the viewer with a wounded heart recalls that these people have remained and he will meet them again before they fall into new positions they deserve, and he, the spectator, will get entangled with them in their dark deeds, and they will be able to punish him for this before they have time to punish themselves for their own outwitted evil stupidity.

In "Undergrowth" the viewer is shown a wealthy noble family of Catherine's time in an unimaginably chaotic state. All concepts here are turned upside down and distorted; all feelings are turned inside out; there is not a single reasonable and conscientious attitude left; in everything there is oppression and arbitrariness, lies and deceit and a circular, total misunderstanding. Who is stronger, oppresses; whoever is weaker lies and deceives, and neither one nor the other understands why they oppress, lie and deceive, and no one even wants to think why they do not understand this. The wife-mistress, contrary to law and nature, oppresses her husband, not being smarter than him, and turns everything around, that is, turns everything upside down, being much more impudent than him. She is the only person in the house, all the others are impersonal pronouns, and when they are asked who they are, they timidly answer: “I am my wife’s husband, and I am my sister’s brother, and I am my mother’s son.” She does not put a penny on her husband's opinion and, complaining about the Lord, swears that her husband looks at everything through her eyes. She orders a caftan for her serf, who does not know how to sew, and rages, indignant why he does not sew like a real tailor. From morning to evening, she does not give rest to either her tongue or her hands, now she swears, then she fights: “that’s how the house is kept,” in her words. And this is how he holds up. She loves her son with the love of a dog for her puppies, as she herself proudly characterizes her love, encourages in her son disrespect for his father, and the son, a 16-year-old kid, pays his mother for such love with the rudeness of cattle. She allows her son to overeat to stomach anguish and is sure that she is raising him, as parental duty commands. Holyly keeping the testament of her great father voevoda Skotinin, who died of starvation on a chest with money and shouted at the reminder of the teachings of children: “Do not be the Skotinin who wants to learn something”, the daughter, faithful to family traditions, hates science to rage, but stupidly teaches son for service and light, repeating to him: “Live for a century, learn for a century,” and at the same time justifies his educational disgust with an untidy allusion to the ultimate goal of education that she believes: “It’s not a century for you, my friend, to study: you thank God so much already you understand that you yourself will cock the children. The dearest of Mitrofan's teachers, the German coachman Vralman, who contracted to teach all the sciences, teaches absolutely nothing and cannot teach, because he himself knows nothing, even interferes with teaching others, justifying his pedagogy to his mother by the fact that her son's little head is much weaker than his belly, and even it does not withstand excessive stuffing; and for this consideration, accessible to the motherly-simple mind, Vralman is the only person in the house with whom the hostess treats decently, even with respect that is within her power. Having robbed everything from her peasants, Mrs. Prostakova mournfully wonders how she can’t rip anything off from them - such a disaster! She boasts that she has taken in an orphan relative with means and surreptitiously robs her. The benefactor wants to give this orphan Sofya for her brother without her asking, and he is not averse to this, not because he likes the “girl”, but because in her villages there are excellent pigs, to which he has a “mortal hunt”. She does not want to believe that her terrible uncle Sophia, whom she recognized as dead only because she had been commemorating him in church for the repose of her soul for several years, is resurrected, and is tearing and thrashing, ready to scratch out the eyes of anyone who tells her that he did not die. But the tyrant-woman is a terrible coward and fawns before any force with which she does not hope to cope - before the rich uncle Starodum, wanting to arrange for her brother's bride, who has accidentally become rich, for her son; but when she is refused, she decides to forcibly marry her to her son by deception, that is, to involve the Church itself in her godless lawlessness. Reason, conscience, honor, shame, decency, the fear of God and human - all the foundations and bonds of social order are burning in this Prostakov-Skotinin hell, where the devil is the mistress of the house herself, as Starodum calls her, and when she finally got caught, when all her the unholy cobweb was torn apart by the broom of the law, she, throwing herself on her knees before his guardian, sings her ugly tragedy, though not Hamletian, but Tartuffe's epilogue in her nee edition: “Ah, I am a dog's daughter! What have I done!" But this was a momentary confusion, if there was no pretense: as soon as she was forgiven, she remembered herself, became herself again, and her first thought was to flog the whole household to death for her failure, and when she was noticed that no one was free to tyrannize, she immortalized herself with the famous objection:

- Not free! The nobleman, when he wants, and the servants are not free to flog! But why have we been given a decree on the freedom of the nobility?

That's the whole point. "Mistress of interpreting decrees!" - we will repeat after Starodum. It's all about the last words of Mrs. Prostakova; in them the whole meaning of the drama and the whole drama in them. Everything else is her stage or literary setting, nothing more; everything that precedes these words is their dramatic prologue; everything that follows them is their dramatic epilogue. 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 her it would have been a comedy of nonsense. It is only necessary to destroy the signs of surprise and the question in the words of Mrs. Prostakova, to shift her somewhat pathetic speech, caused by the anxious state of the interpreter, into simple logical language, and then her unfavorable logic will be clearly indicated. The decree on the freedom of the nobility was given so that the nobleman was free to flog his servants when he wanted. Mrs. Prostakova, as a direct, naive lady, understood legal provisions only in concrete, practical applications, which in her words is the right of arbitrary section of serf servants. Raising this detail to its principle, we find that the decree on the freedom of the nobility was given to the rights of the nobles and nothing but rights, that is, no duties, was assigned to the nobles, according to the interpretation of Mrs. Prostakova. Rights without duties are a legal absurdity, as a consequence without a cause - a logical absurdity; an estate with only rights without duties is a political impossibility, and impossibility cannot exist. Madame Prostakova imagined the Russian nobility to be such an impossibility, that is, she took it and pronounced the death sentence on the estate, which at that time was not at all going to die and is still alive. That was her nonsense. But the fact is that when this famous decree of Peter III was issued, very many of the Russian nobles raised their hands to their class, understood it in the same way as Mrs. Prostakova understood, who came from the “great and ancient” Skotinin family, as she calls it her brother himself, Taras Skotinin himself, according to his own assurance, "is not the last of his kind." I can’t understand why Fonvizin allowed Starodum and Pravdin, in a conversation with Skotinin, to tease the antiquity of the Skotinin family and tempt the genealogical pride of the simpleton Skotinin with a hint that his ancestor, perhaps even older than Adam, “was created even on the sixth day, but a little earlier Adam”, because Sophia is not a couple of Skotinin because she is a noblewoman: after all, the comedy itself testifies that Skotinin had a village, peasants, was the son of a governor, which means that he was also a nobleman, even ranked according to the table of ranks as “the best senior nobility in all virtues and advantages," and therefore his ancestor could not have been created at the same time as the quadrupeds. How did the Russian nobles of the last century let down Fonvizin, who himself was a nobleman, such an awkward hint? You can joke as much as you like about the jurisprudence of Mrs. Prostakova, about the mind of Mr. Skotinin, but not about their ancestors: the joke on Skotinin's genealogy, moreover, with the participation of biblical legends, on the part of Starodum and Pravdin, that is, Fonvizin, was a dangerous, double-edged weapon; it is reminiscent of Kuteikin's comedy, all built on a parody of biblical terms and texts - an unpleasant and unreliable comic device, hardly able to amuse anyone. This should be thoroughly explained to the youth reading The Undergrowth, and interpreted in the sense that here Fonvizin did not joke about either the ancestors or the texts, but only denounced people abusing both in his own way. This joke can be excused, if not by a passion for their own wit, then indignation at the fact that the Skotinins justified their noble origin too little and came under the cruel assessment of the same Starodum, who said: “A nobleman, unworthy of being a nobleman, I don’t know anything meaner in the world.” The indignation of the comedian is quite understandable: he could not help but understand all the lies and danger of the view that many nobles of his time adopted on the decree on the freedom of the nobility, understanding it, as it was interpreted in the school of prostakov's jurisprudence. This interpretation was false and dangerous, threatening to cloud the legal meaning and destroy the political position of the leading class of Russian society. The freedom of the nobility under the decree of 1762 was understood by many as the dismissal of the estate from all special estate duties with the preservation of all estate rights. It was a fatal mistake, a blatant misunderstanding. The totality of state duties that lay on the nobility as an estate constituted what was called his service the state. The famous manifesto of February 18, 1762 stated that nobles in military or civil service could continue or retire at will, however, with some restrictions. The law did not say a word about any new rights over serfs, about any section of servants; on the contrary, some obligations that remained on the class were directly and persistently stipulated, among other things, compulsory education established by Peter the Great: “so that no one would dare to raise their children under our heavy anger without teaching the sciences worthy of the noble nobility.” At the end of the decree, politely expressed hope, that the nobility will not shy away from service, but will enter into it with zeal, no less and diligently teach their children decent sciences, and, however, it is immediately added quite angrily that those nobles who will not fulfill both of these duties, as negligent people about good in general commanded all loyal subjects "to despise and destroy" and not to endure in public meetings. How else could it be said more clearly than this, and where liberty, complete dismissal from compulsory service? The law abolished, and even then with restrictions, only the mandatory term of service (at least 25 years), established by decree of 1736. The nobles of the Prostakov mind were misled by the fact that the law did not directly order to serve, which was not necessary, but only threatened with punishment for evading service, which was not unnecessarily. But the threat of the law by punishment for an act is an indirect prohibition of the act. This is the legal logic that requires that the threatening punishment follows from the forbidden act, as the effect follows from its cause. The decree of February 18 canceled only the investigation, and the prostakov lawyers thought that the cause had been cancelled. They fell into the same error as we would if, after reading the injunction that thieves should not be tolerated in society, they thought that theft was allowed, but the servants were forbidden to take thieves into the house when they called. These lawyers understood too literally not only the words, but also the omissions of the law, and the law, wishing to speak politely, solemnly declaring that it grants “freedom and freedom to the entire Russian noble nobility,” said more pleasant things than he wanted to say, and tried to soften as much as possible something that was unpleasant to be reminded of. The law said: be so kind, serve and teach your children, but by the way, whoever does not do either of these will be expelled from society. Many in the Russian society of the last century did not understand this delicate appeal of the law to the public conscience, because they received an insufficiently gentle civic education. They were accustomed to the simple, slightly soldierly language of the Petrine legislation, which liked to speak with sticks, whips, the gallows and a bullet, promised to rip the nostrils of the criminal and send him to hard labor, or even deprive him of his very stomach and cut off his head to execute, or mercilessly arquebus (shoot). These people understood duty when it was carved in bloody smudges on living skin, and not written in human speech in human conscience. Such realism of legal thinking prevented thinkers from penetrating into the meaning of the law, which, for neglect of the common good, threatened that the negligent "below our court, the arrival or in public meetings and celebrations will not be tolerated": no sticks, no lashes, but only the closing of courtiers and public doors! There was a major legal misunderstanding. The satire of that time revealed its source: it is too loose an appetite for arbitrariness. She portrayed a district nobleman who writes to his son about the decree on February 18: “They say that the nobles are given liberty; but the devil heard it, God forgive me, what a liberty! They gave them freedom, but nothing can be done by one's own will, it is impossible to take away the land from a neighbor. The thought of this lawyer went even further than that of the Prostakovs, demanding not only a certificate of discharge from estate duty, but also a patent for the estate privilege of lawlessness.

So, a significant part of the nobility in the last century did not understand the historically established position of their estate, and the undergrowth, Fonvizinsky undergrowth Mitrofan, was a victim of this misunderstanding. Fonvizin's comedy inseparably connected both of these words so that Mitrofan became a household name, and undergrowth- own: undergrowth is a synonym for Mitrofan, and Mitrofan is a synonym for a stupid ignoramus and mother's darling. 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 historical prototype of this caricature was the rank, in which there is as little funny as there is little of this in the rank of a high school student. In the language of ancient Rus' undergrowth- a teenager under 15 years old, a noble undergrowth - a teenager who "kept pace" in the sovereign's military service and became novice, "grown man", as soon as he kept up with the service, that is, he reached 15 years old. The title of undergrowth of the nobility is a whole state institution, a whole page from the history of Russian law. Legislation and the government carefully arranged the position of the undersized, which is understandable: it was a growing military reserve. In the main military administration, in the Discharge Moscow Order, they kept lists of them with the designation of the years of each, in order to know the annual draft contingent; the order of their review and analysis was established, according to which those who were in time were written to the service, in which one they were fit, the order put them on their old father's or new estates, etc. With this order, it was difficult, and even unprofitable, for underage children to lie at home after reaching military age: landed and monetary salaries were assigned, additions were made to the first "new" salaries only for active service or proven serviceability, "who was worth what", and "getting out of service", it was possible not only not to get a new estate, but also to lose your father's. There were also in the 17th century. undergrowths, “who were in time for service, but did not serve the service” and did not appear at the reviews, “growled”, as they said then about such non-rumors. Since the reign of Peter the Great, this service "cucumber" of noble undergrowth has been increasing more and more for various reasons: service in the new regular army has become incomparably harder than before; moreover, the law of January 20, 1714 required compulsory education from noble children in order to prepare for service; on the other hand, local ownership became hereditary, and endowing noviks with local salaries ceased. Thus, the hardships of compulsory service increased at the same time as the material motivation for it weakened. “Sleeping” from school and service became a chronic ailment of the nobility, which did not succumb to the strict decrees of Peter I and his successors on the appearance of minors at reviews with threats of a whip, fines, “defamation”, an irrevocable unsubscribe of estates to the treasury for disobedience. Pososhkov assures that in his time, “many multitudes” of nobles lived for their centuries, grew old, lived in the villages, but did not even go to the service with one foot. The nobles used the income from the lands and serfs granted to the estate for service, and as both of them strengthened behind the estate, they more and more zealously evaded service. These deviations expressed the same unscrupulous attitude towards estate duty, which sounded so rude in the words heard by the same Pososhkov from many nobles: “God grant that the Great Sovereign serve, but do not take out the sabers from the scabbard.” Such an attitude towards class duties to the state and society brought up “lazybones” among the nobility, about whom Pososhkov venomously remarked: “At home, he is terrible for his neighbors, like a lion, but in the service he is worse than a goat.” This very view of the state and civic duties of the estate turned the undergrowth of the nobility, who was in time for service, into a rude and stupid ignoramus and lazy person, who avoided school and service in every possible way.

Such a converted undergrowth is Fonvizinsky Mitrofan, a very stable and tenacious type in Russian society, who survived the very legislation on undergrowth, who knew how to “lift” not only children, according to the prediction of his mother, Mrs. Prostakova, but also granddaughters of “the times of the latest Mitrofans,” as Pushkin put it . Mitrofan Fonvizin will soon be 16 years old; but he is still among the minors: according to the law of 1736, the period of study (that is, the title) of the minor was extended to 20 years. Mitrofan, due to the condition of his parents, studies at home, and not at school: the same law allowed undergrowth with means to be brought up at home. Mitrofan has been studying for four years now, and very badly: according to the hour book, he barely wanders with a pointer in his hand, and then only under the dictation of the teacher, deacon Kuteikin, in arithmetic "he did not learn anything" from the retired sergeant Tsyfirkin, but "in French and all sciences "He is not taught at all by the teacher himself, a former coachman, the German Vralman, dearly hired to teach these" all sciences ". But the mother is very pleased with both this last teacher, who “does not captivate the child,” and the success of her “child,” who, in her words, already understands so much that he himself will “cock up” the children. She has a natural, family Skotinin disgust for learning: “Without science, people live and lived,” she impressively declares to Starodum, remembering the testament of her father, who said: “Don’t be that Skotinin who wants to learn something.” But she, too, knows that “now the age is different,” and, shaking him, with fussy annoyance, she prepares her son “for people”: go to St. Petersburg, an unlearned one - they will say, a fool. She pampers her son, "while he is still underage"; but she is afraid of the service into which, “God forbid,” he will have to enter in ten years. The demands of society and service imposed on these people the science they hated, and they hated it more sincerely. This was one of the tragicomic difficulties that these people created for themselves by not understanding their class position, which caused them so many Mitrofans; and in the position of the class there was a change that required full attention to itself.

In Fonvizin's comedy, consciously or unconsciously for its author and the first viewers, both these difficulties found artistic expression, and the misunderstanding of the turning point in the position of the Russian nobility that created them, which had a decisive influence on the further fate of this class, and through it on the whole of Russian society . Long prepared, this turning point came precisely from the moment the law was issued on February 18, 1762. For many centuries, the nobility bore the brunt of military service, protecting the fatherland from external enemies, forming the main armed force of the country. For this, the state gave into his hands a huge amount of land, made him a landowning class, and in the 17th century. put at his disposal on serfdom and the peasant population of his lands. This was a great sacrifice to the estate: in the year of the first performance of The Undergrowth (1782), the nobility accounted for more than half (53%) of the entire peasant population in the old Great Russian regions of the state - more than half of the population whose labor mainly fed the state and national economy of Russia. Under Peter I, compulsory education was added to the compulsory service of the nobility on January 20, 1714 as a preparation for such a service. So a nobleman became a statesman, a service person from the moment he grew up to the opportunity to take a training pointer in his hands. According to Peter, the nobility was to become a guide to the Russian society of a new education, scientific knowledge, which was borrowed from the West. Meanwhile, military service was extended to other classes; The general military service of the nobility after Peter became less necessary for the state: in the regular army organized by Peter, the nobility retained the importance of a trained officer reserve. Then the peaceful educational appointment, proposed for the nobility by the reformer, began to come forward more and more insistently. The fertile, peaceful field was ready, waiting for the figures, working on which the nobility could render a new service to the fatherland, no less than what it served on the battlefield. The serfs were poor and ruined, left in the absence of the landowners to the arbitrariness of tax collectors, elders, managers, clerks, whom the government itself likened to wolves. The landowner was then considered a natural patron and economic guardian of his peasants, and his presence among them was regarded as a boon for them. Therefore, for the state, a nobleman in the countryside became no less, if not more, needed than in the barracks. That is why, from the death of Peter, the hardships that lay on the nobility in the service were gradually eased, but in return, his duties in land ownership became more complicated. Since 1736, the indefinite military service of a nobleman was limited to a 25-year term, and in 1762, serving nobles were given the right to resign at their discretion. On the other hand, the landlords are responsible for the tax serviceability of their peasants, and then the obligation to feed them in lean years and lend them seeds for sowing. But even in the countryside the state needed an educated, intelligent and philanthropic landowner. Therefore, the government did not allow the slightest weakening of the educational duty of the nobility, by threatening to give ignoramuses as sailors without seniority, they drove the underage to state schools, established periodic examinations for those who were brought up at home, as well as at school, and provided significant advantages in the service of trained newcomers. The very obligation of the nobility to serve was considered not only as a means of equipping the army and navy with officers of the noble reserve, but also as an educational tool for the nobleman, to whom military service imparted, along with the military and a well-known civil bearing, knowledge of the world, humanity, hewed the Prostakovs and humanized the Skotinins, hammered in both, the joy of “the common good”, “knowledge of political affairs”, as expressed by the manifesto on February 18, 1762, and encouraged parents to take care of the home preparation of children for state school and service, so that they would not come to the capital as complete ignoramuses with danger become a laughing stock for your comrades. Even Mrs. Prostakova vividly felt this significance of the service. Because of what is she tearing herself up, fussing about the education of her son? She agrees with Vralman's opinion about the danger of stuffing a weak head with scientific food that is too much for her. “Yes, what are you going to do? she mourns. - Child, without learning, go to the same Petersburg - they will say, a fool. There are a lot of smart people now; I'm afraid of them." And the Fonvizinsky brigadier persuades his wife to enroll their Ivanushka in the regiment: “Let him, serving in the regiment, gain his mind.” It was necessary to overcome the stubborn aversion to science in the children of the nobility, against whom the decree of the Empress Anna of 1736 complained that they would rather join the servile court service than serve the state, run away from the sciences and thereby ruin themselves. In view of the danger of the savagery of the non-serving nobility, the government for a long time was afraid not only to abolish, but also to reduce the compulsory service of the class. On the proposal of the Minich commission to establish a 25-year term of noble service with the right to reduce it on certain conditions, the Senate in 1731 he objected with the consideration that the rich nobles, taking advantage of these conditions, would never, by their will, go into service, but would live at home "in all idleness and laziness and without any good sciences and manners." It was necessary to wean the Russian students of Vralmanov from the absurd opinion of their teacher, expressed by him so ingenuously: “As if a Russian nobleman could no longer advance in society without a Russian letter!” And so, in 1762, the government decided that stubbornness had been broken, and in a manifesto on February 18 it solemnly announced that by the compulsory service of the nobility “rudeness in those who are negligent about the common good has been exterminated, ignorance has changed into common sense, noble thoughts have rooted in the hearts of all true Russian patriots boundless loyalty and love to us, great zeal and excellent zeal for our service. But the legislator knew the limits of this “boundless fidelity and excellent jealousy” and therefore concluded the “liberty and freedom” granted to the estate in certain conditions, which amounted to the requirement that the estate, in good conscience, continue to do what it had hitherto done under duress. Means, the compulsory urgency of the 25-year service was replaced by the law with its moral obligation, from a duty prescribed by law, he turned it into a requirement of state decency or civic duty, the failure to fulfill which is punished by a corresponding punishment - expulsion from a decent society; so the educational service was confirmed strictly.