How to use stories and plays content Introduction

Chapter II. Practical analysis in the Comedy of A.S. Griboyedov
2.1 The specifics of the comedy genre A.S. Griboyedov
Late 18th - early 19th century - the era of active artistic transformations in Russian drama. Enlightenment ideas, on which the comedyography of D. I. Fonvizin, I. S. Krylov was built, give way to the ideals of social transformations that require new forms of embodiment. Mutual repulsion and diffusion of the surviving classicist system, short-lived sentimentalism, affirming romanticism, emerging realism made up the cultural, aesthetic atmosphere in which the comedy genre, which was most popular at that time, functioned. It is no coincidence that this particular genre caused heated debate about the new theatrical and dramatic poetics, about the forms and possibilities of the dramatic kind,
about the fate of the theater, about the essence of the comic, which has become the aesthetic dominant of the era, about the purpose of comedy. There are known sharp disputes between the authors of Son of the Fatherland and Northern Observer about the originality of the Russian theater and the “nationality” of comedy. Here is how the leading prolific playwright, theatrical figure, and an active member of the Association “Conversation of Russian Word Lovers” A. A. Shakhovskoy presented his vision of the comedy genre in the preface to his comedy “Semibarian Ideas”: “The art of comedy is not something
conditional, depending on circumstances and fashion; but ... drawn from the mental Nature of man, based on the lofty truths of morality and public good, and therefore accurate, unchanging, eternal ... clothes, adopt it to your
fatherland." In this formula, the most famous comedian of the early 19th century, who defended the protective ideology, constructed the parameters of an original comedy in the spirit of the then popular notion of the Russification of the theater due to the alterations of European comedy by dressing the characters in a “Russian sundress” and renaming them. Comedy was assigned a leading role at the beginning of the century, because it performed a teaching function, exposing, first of all, universal human vices against the backdrop of reality. Representatives of the "Green Lamp" called a comedy a work with a life-accusatory, everyday "lining",
ridiculing the vicious sides of modern society. N. Gnedich generally insisted that it was time for the Russian theater to master civil themes and assert civil pathos. The “Guardian” by A. Shakhovskaya, in the same preface, which is considered to be its theoretical manifesto, also substantiates the social function of comedy: “... who more than a comic Author can contribute to the public good: the goals of a wise Government? - The duty of the Writer of Comedy begins where the power of laws falls silent. Harmful customs, inveterate prejudices, violent passions, reckless innovations, ignorance, arrogance and meanness, which are not subject to civil punishment, are brought out by him before the people's court and are executed by ridicule. But despite the seriousness of the manifested demands
to the stage of “innovators” and “archaists”, the theater, for the sake of the public, sought to win its heart with an entertaining, light comedy, while “biting” and “noble” comedies were mostly theoretical
constructions. The form of the European "serious drama", or "bourgeois drama", has not yet been mastered by the Russian stage, so everyday scenes, farces - alterations of French mass culture were staged in the theater. So, the first dramatic experience of A. S. Griboedov "Young Spouses" was a reworking of the play with a trivial comic-everyday situation by Crezet de Lesser "Family Secret" (1809), staged in 1815 in St. Petersburg, in 1816 - in Moscow. An excerpt from the comedy "Own Family, or a Married Bride",
written by order of A. A. Shakhovsky for the benefit performance of the actress Valberkhova (1817), is also based on the family intrigue traditional for the European comedy of manners. The play Feigned Infidelity (1818) is Griboyedov's translation of a comedy by the French playwright of the 18th century. Bart (1768) These experiences of "reworkings" and translations by the novice playwright were included in the general theatrical and dramatic picture of the first quarter of the 19th century. The more unexpected and revolutionary was the aesthetic explosion made by the comedy Woe from Wit , the genre definition of which, however, does not fit into the genre formula traditional for the beginning of the century and still gives rise to various scientific hypotheses. One of them is presented in this article, where we consider Griboedov's work as a meta-genre. We understand the meta-genre as a transitional form-containing unity, which is, as it were, in a marginal, unstable state of interweaving, diffusion of various
genre forms. Moreover, this is not a conglomerate, not a synthesis of frankly readable genres - comedies, tragedies, dramas - but, to put it metaphorically, a transparent amphora into which multi-colored jets are poured
from different springs located on the same "plateau", creating an aesthetic drink in which different tastes are captured, which make up a special bouquet. The meta-genre, in our opinion, is an aesthetic product of a transitional
era. And this transitivity determined the genre specifics of the comedy Woe from Wit, which united genres and genre forms, reflecting the interaction and mutual repulsion of styles and artistic methods. Researchers have repeatedly pointed to the synthetic nature of Griboyedov's comedy. Thus, Y. Tynyanov notes in it the combination of tragic and comedic collision: “The center of comedy is in the comical position of Chatsky himself, and here comedy is a means of tragedy, and comedy is a type of tragedy.” Exploring the style of Griboyedov's comedy, the language of Chatsky, T. A. Alpatova emphasizes that his flexible word “is not closed within the framework of one genre. Chatsky has access to different tonalities of speech - both high satire, and the intonation of a civil ode, and the sincerity of an elegy; in the “epigram” answers to the guests, he peculiarly
parodies their own speech. And similar observations are made by almost all researchers of the genre specifics of the play. In the comedy of A. S. Griboedov, in our opinion, the intuitive search of the aesthetic era for fundamentally new artistic forms is reflected.