The Minor (Fonvizin play)
| The Minor | |
|---|---|
Title page of the first published edition (1783) | |
| Original title | Недоросль |
| Written by | Denis Fonvizin |
| Date premiered | 5 October [O.S. 24 September] 1782, Saint Petersburg |
| Original language | Russian |
| Genre | Comedy, play |
The Minor (Russian: Недоросль; also translated as The Infant and The Young Hopeful), is a 1782 comedy play by Denis Fonvizin.[1] It is usually regarded as the greatest pre-19th-century Russian play.[2]
Commentary
On watching it, Prince Grigory Potemkin is purported to have said: "die, Denis: you won't write anything better!", a popular Russian phrase.[3]
The point of the satire in The Minor is directed against the brutish and selfish crudeness and barbarity of the uneducated country gentry. The central character, Mitrofanushka, is the accomplished type of vulgar and brutal selfishness, unredeemed by a single human feature—even his fondly doting mother gets nothing from him for her pains. The dialogue of these vicious characters (in contrast to the stilted language of the lovers and their virtuous uncles) is true to life and finely individualized; and they are all masterpieces of characterization—a worthy introduction to the great portrait gallery of Russian fiction.
As a measure of its popularity, several expressions from The Minor have been turned into proverbs, and many authors (among whom Alexander Pushkin) used to cite from this play, or at least hint to it by mentioning the characters' names.[4] [5] [6]
Faddei Bulgarin wrote a satirical fantasy novel Похождения Митрофанушки в Луне (The Adventures of Mitrofanushka in the Moon) (1837).[7]
References
- ^ Gogol, Nikolaĭ (1994). Ehre, Milton; Gottschalk, Fruma (eds.). Gogol: Plays and Selected Writings. European Drama Classics. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. p. xvi. ISBN 978-0-8101-1159-2.
Fonvizin's The Minor (1782), besides being the best eighteenth-century Russian comedy, is exemplary of the tangle of elements that went into the genre and which Gogol was finally to unravel. It is a play with two faces: on the one side, a crisp satire of the boorishness and brutality of the worst segment of the Russian provincial gentry; on the other, a tiresome lecture on the virtues of enlightenment and aristocratic honor.
- ^ Briggs, A.D.P. (1998). Cornwell, Neil (ed.). Reference Guide to Russian Literature. New York: Routledge. pp. 305–306. doi:10.4324/9781315073873. ISBN 978-1-315-07387-3.
More successful in every way was Fonvizin's masterpiece, The Minor (also translated as The Infant, The Young Hopeful, etc) (1782), which has no close rival for the title of Russia's finest pre-19th-century play.
- ^ As quoted in Chekhov, Anton. Ионыч [Ionych] (in Russian). Footnote 4.
«Умри, Денис, лучше не напишешь» — фраза, будто бы сказанная князем Г. А. Потемкиным после первого представления комедии Д. И. Фонвизина «Недоросль» (1782).
["Die, Denis, you won't write anything better" is a phrase allegedly said by Prince Grigory Potemkin after the first performance of Denis Fonvizin's comedy The Minor (1782).]{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) - ^ Alexander Pushkin, The Captain's Daughter, Chapter 1 and motto of Chapter III.
- ^ Pushkin, The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, motto
- ^ Pushkin, A Novel in Letters, Chapter VIII
- ^ Похождения Митрофанушки в Луне, fantlab.ru
External links
- English translation of the play by F. D. Reeve in the volume Nineteenth-century Russian Plays (New York, 1976), on the Internet Archive
- Full text of the play in Russian on the Russian Virtual Library (Rvb.ru)