High comedy Tartuffe. The importance of Molière in the development of French dramaturgy, the formation of the genre of "high comedy" in his work
The theme of "philistinism in the nobility" in the works of Molière. reasons for its relevance.
The satirical orientation of Molière's comedy "Tartuffe". The role of comedy in the fight against feudal Catholic reaction.
The peculiarity of the interpretation of the image of Don Juan in Moliere's comedy "Don Juan".
Lectures: Molière led to comedy serious problems, but talks about them comically ("make and teach"). Expansion of characters: commoners + nobles. Types of Molière's comedies: 1. One-act - sitcoms; 2. Purely High comedies (as a rule, five-act ones) - partly written in verse (Tartuffe, Don Juan, Miser).
Libertines: 1. The demand for freedom of thought. 2. Household Libertinism - violation of prohibitions at the level of everyday life. Don Juan is a libertine.
Already in the first half of the XVII century. theorists of classicism defined the genre of comedy as a lower genre, the scope of which was private life, everyday life and customs. Despite the fact that in France by the middle of the 17th century. the comedies of Corneille, Scarron, Cyrano de Bergerac were written, the true creator of the classic comedy was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin ( stage name- Molière, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, Molière, 1622-1673), son of a court upholsterer-decorator. Nevertheless, Moliere received an excellent education for that time. In the Jesuit College of Clermont, he thoroughly studied the ancient languages and literature of antiquity. Moliere gave preference to history, philosophy, natural sciences. He was especially interested in the atomistic teachings of the materialist philosophers Epicurus and Lucretius. Lucretius's poem "On the Nature of Things" he translated into French. This translation has not been preserved, but he later included several verses from Lucretius in Eliant's monologue ("The Misanthrope", II, 3). At the college, Moliere also got acquainted with the philosophy of P. Gassendi and became a staunch supporter of it. Following Gassendi, Moliere believed in the legitimacy and rationality of the natural instincts of man, in the need for freedom in the development of human nature. After graduating from the Clermont College (1639), he followed a law course at the University of Orleans, ending with the successful passing of the exam for the title of licentiate of rights. Upon completion of his education, Molière could become a Latinist, and a philosopher, and a lawyer, and an artisan, which his father so desired.
The farce attracted Molière with its content taken from everyday life, the variety of themes, the diversity and vitality of the images, and the variety of comic situations. Throughout his life, Molière retained this predilection for farce, and even in his highest comedies (for example, in Tartuffe) he often introduced farcical elements. The Italian comedy of masks (commedia dell'arte), which was very popular in France, also played a significant role in Moliere's work. The improvisation of the actors during the performance, the intricate intrigue, the characters taken from life, the principles of acting, characteristic of the comedy of masks, were used by Moliere in his early work.
Molière, the author who once said: “I take my good where I find it,” builds comedies not only on original intrigue, but often on the use of already developed plots. In those days it was quite acceptable. Being well-read, Moliere turns to Roman comedians, Renaissance Italians, Spanish novelists and playwrights, to his older French contemporaries; famous authors (Scarron, Rotru).
In 1658 Molière and his troupe returned to Paris. In the Louvre, before the king, they played Corneille's tragedy "Nycomedes" and Moliere's farce "Doctor in Love", where he played the main role. Molière's success was brought by his own play. At the request of Louis XIV, Moliere's troupe was allowed to stage performances at the Petit Bourbon court theater in turn with the Italian troupe.
Satisfying the requirements of the king to create entertaining spectacles, Molière turns to a new genre - comedy-ballets. In Paris, Moliere wrote 13 plays, which included music as a necessary, and often as the main component. Molière's comedies-ballets are stylistically divided into two groups. The first category includes lyrical plays of a sublime nature with a deep psychological characterization of the main characters. These are, for example, "The Princess of Elis" (1664, presented at Versailles at the festival "The Amusements of the Enchanted Island"), "Melisert" and "Cosmic Pastoral" (1666, presented at the festival "Ballet of the Muses" in Saint-Germain), "Brilliant Lovers "(1670, at the festival" Royal entertainment ", ibid)," Psyche "(1671, in the Tuileries). The second group is mainly everyday satirical comedies with farcical elements, for example: The Sicilian (1667, in Saint-Germain), Georges Dandin (1668, in Versailles), Monsieur de Poursonac (1669, in Chambord) , "The tradesman in the nobility" (1670, ibid.), "The Imaginary Sick" (1673, in the Palais Royal). Moliere skillfully used a variety of ways to achieve a harmonious combination of singing, music and dance with dramatic action. Many comedy-ballets, in addition to high artistic merit, were of great social importance. In addition, these innovative plays by Molière (in combination with the music of Lully) contributed to the birth of new musical genres in France: tragedy in music, i.e. opera (comedy-ballets of the first group) and comic opera (comedy-ballets of the second group) - purely French democratic genre, which would flourish in the 18th century.
Evaluating comedy as a genre, Molière declares that it is not only equal to tragedy, but even higher than it, because it “makes honest people laugh” and thus “helps to eradicate vices.” The task of comedy is to be a mirror of society, to portray the shortcomings of people of their time. The criterion of artistic comedy is the truth of reality. This truth can be achieved only when the artist draws material from life itself, choosing the most natural phenomena and creating generalized characters based on specific observations. The playwright should not paint portraits, "but morals, without touching people." Since “the task of comedy is to represent all the shortcomings of people in general and modern people in particular,” it is “impossible to create a character that would not resemble anyone around” (“Impromptu of Versailles”, I, 3). The writer will never exhaust all the material, "life supplies it in abundance" (ibid.). Unlike tragedy, which depicts “heroes,” comedy must depict “people,” while it is necessary to “follow nature,” that is, endow them with features characteristic of contemporaries and draw them with living faces capable of experiencing suffering. “I, at least, believe,” writes Molière, “that it is much easier to play on high feelings, to mock misfortunes in verse, to smash fate and curse the gods, than to penetrate into the ridiculous sides of people and turn their shortcomings into a pleasant sight. When you draw a character, you do whatever you want... But when you draw people, you have to draw them from nature. These portraits are required to be similar, and if you cannot recognize contemporaries in them, you have worked in vain ”(“ Criticism of the “School of Wives”, I, 7). Following “the greatest of the rules is to please” (ibid.), Moliere calls for listening “to the sound judgments of the parterre” (“Criticism on the “School of Wives”, I, 6), i.e., to the opinion of the most democratic spectator.
Moliere's comedies can be divided into two types, differing in artistic structure, the nature of the comic, intrigue and content in general. The first group includes everyday comedies, with a farcical plot, one-act or three-act, written in prose. Their comedy is the comedy of positions (The Ridiculous Pretenders, 1659; Sganarelle, or the Imaginary Cuckold, 1660; Reluctant Marriage, 1664; Reluctant Doctor, 1666; Skalen's Scammers, 1671). The other group is the "high comedies". They should be written mostly in verse and consist of five acts. Comic " high comedy"- this is a comedy of character, an intellectual comedy ("Tartuffe", "Don Juan", "Misanthrope", "Scientific Women", etc.).
In the mid-1660s, Moliere creates his best comedies, in which he criticizes the vices of the clergy, nobility and bourgeoisie. The first of these was "Tartuffe, or the Deceiver" (edited in 1664, 1667 and 1669)._The play was to be shown during the grandiose court celebration "Entertainment of the Enchanted Island", which took place in May 1664 in Versailles. However, the play upset the holiday. A real conspiracy arose against Moliere, led by the Queen Mother Anna of Austria. Moliere was accused of insulting religion and the church, demanding punishment for this. The performances of the play have been cancelled.
Moliere made an attempt to stage the play in a new edition. In the first edition of 1664, Tartuffe was a clergyman. The rich Parisian bourgeois Orgon, into whose house this rogue enters, pretending to be a saint, does not yet have a daughter - the priest Tartuffe could not marry her. Tartuffe deftly gets out of a difficult situation, despite the accusations of his son Orgon, who caught him at the moment of courting his stepmother Elmira. The triumph of Tartuffe unequivocally testified to the danger of hypocrisy.
In the second edition (1667; like the first, it has not reached us), Molière expanded the play, added two more acts to the existing three, where he depicted the connections of the hypocrite Tartuffe with the court, the court and the police. Tartuffe was named Panyulf and turned into a man of the world, intending to marry Orgon's daughter Marianna. The comedy, called "The Deceiver", ended with the exposure of Panyulf and the glorification of the king. In the last edition that has come down to us (1669), the hypocrite was again called Tartuffe, and the whole play was called "Tartuffe, or the Deceiver."
The king knew about Moliere's play and approved of his idea. Fighting for Tartuffe, Molière in the first Petition to the King defended comedy, defended himself against accusations of godlessness and spoke about the social role of the satirical writer. The king did not remove the ban from the play, but he did not heed the advice of the rabid saints “to burn not only the book, but also its author, a demon, an atheist and a libertine who wrote a diabolical, full of abomination play in which he mocks the church and religion, the sacred functions” (“The Greatest King of the World”, pamphlet by Dr. Sorbonne Pierre Roullet, 1664).
Permission to stage the play in its second edition was given by the king orally, in a hurry, when leaving for the army. Immediately after the premiere, the comedy was again banned by the President of the Parliament (the highest judicial institution) Lamoignon, and the Parisian Archbishop Perefix published a message where he forbade all parishioners and clergy from “presenting, reading or listening to a dangerous play” under pain of excommunication. Molière poisoned the second Petition to the king's headquarters, in which he declared that he would completely stop writing if the king did not stand up for him. The king promised to sort it out. In the meantime, comedy is read in private homes, distributed in manuscript, performed in closed home performances (for example, in the palace of the Prince of Conde in Chantilly). In 1666, the queen mother died and this gave Louis XIV the opportunity to promise Molière an early permission to stage. The year 1668 arrived, the year of the so-called "ecclesiastical peace" between orthodox Catholicism and Jansenism, which contributed to a certain tolerance in religious matters. It was then that the production of Tartuffe was allowed. On February 9, 1669, the performance of the play was a huge success.
What was the reason for such violent attacks on "Tartuffe"? Molière had long been drawn to the theme of hypocrisy, which he saw everywhere in public life. In this comedy, Moliere turned to the most common type of hypocrisy at that time - religious - and wrote it based on his observations of the activities of a secret religious society - the "Society of Holy Gifts", which was patronized by Anna of Austria and whose members were both Lamoignon and Perefix, and the princes of the church, and the nobles, and the bourgeois. The king did not give permission for the open activity of this ramified organization, which had existed for more than 30 years, the activity of the society was surrounded by the greatest mystery. Acting under the motto "Suppress every evil, promote every good," the members of the society set their main task as the fight against freethinking and godlessness. Having access to private houses, they, in essence, performed the functions of a secret police, conducting covert surveillance of suspects, collecting facts supposedly proving their guilt, and on this basis handing over alleged criminals to the authorities. Members of the society preached austerity and asceticism in morals, had a negative attitude towards all kinds of secular entertainment and theater, and pursued a passion for fashion. Moliere watched how the members of the "Society of Holy Gifts" insinuatingly and skillfully rubbed themselves into other people's families, how they subjugate people, completely capturing their conscience and their will. This prompted the plot of the play, while the character of Tartuffe was formed from the typical features inherent in the members of the "Society of Holy Gifts".
Like them, Tartuffe is connected with the court, with the police, he is patronized at court. He hides his true appearance, posing as an impoverished nobleman, looking for food on the church porch. He penetrates the Orgon family because in this house, after the marriage of the owner with the young Elmira, instead of the former piety, free morals, fun, critical speeches are heard. In addition, Orgon's friend Argas, a political exile, a member of the Parliamentary Fronde (1649), left him incriminating documents that are kept in a box. Such a family could well seem suspicious to the "Society", and surveillance was established for such families.
Tartuffe is not the embodiment of hypocrisy as a universal vice, it is a socially generalized type. No wonder he is not alone in comedy: his servant Laurent, the bailiff Loyal, and the old woman - Orgon's mother, Mrs. Pernel, are hypocritical. They all cover up their unsightly deeds with pious speeches and vigilantly watch the behavior of others. The characteristic appearance of Tartuffe is created by his imaginary holiness and humility: “He prayed near me every day in the church, / In a pious impulse, kneeling down. // He attracted everyone's attention to himself" (I, 6). Tartuffe is not without external attractiveness, he has courteous, insinuating manners, behind which are hidden prudence, energy, an ambitious thirst for power, the ability to take revenge. He settled well in the house of Orgon, where the owner not only satisfies his slightest whims, but is also ready to give him his daughter Marianna, a rich heiress, as his wife. Orgon confides all the secrets to him, including entrusting him with the storage of the treasured box with incriminating documents. Tartuffe succeeds because he is a subtle psychologist; playing on the fear of the gullible Orgon, he forces the latter to reveal any secrets to him. Tartuffe covers his insidious plans with religious arguments. He is well aware of his strength, and therefore does not restrain his vicious inclinations. He does not love Marianne, she is only a profitable bride for him, he was fascinated by the beautiful Elmira, whom Tartuffe is trying to seduce. His casuistic reasoning that treason is not a sin if no one knows about it outrages Elmira. Damis, the son of Orgon, a witness of a secret meeting, wants to expose the villain, but he, having taken a pose of self-flagellation and repentance for supposedly imperfect sins, again makes Orgon his protector. When, after the second date, Tartuffe falls into a trap and Orgon kicks him out of the house, he begins to take revenge, fully showing his vicious, corrupt and selfish nature.
But Molière not only exposes hypocrisy. In Tartuffe, he raises an important question: why did Orgon allow himself to be so deceived? This already middle-aged man, obviously not stupid, with a strong temper and a strong will, succumbed to the widespread fashion for piety. Orgon believed in the piety and "holiness" of Tartuffe and sees him as his spiritual mentor. However, he becomes a pawn in the hands of Tartuffe, who shamelessly declares that Orgon would rather believe him "than his own eyes" (IV, 5). The reason for this is the inertia of Orgon's consciousness, brought up in submission to authorities. This inertness does not give him the opportunity to critically comprehend the phenomena of life and evaluate the people around him. If Orgon nevertheless acquires a sound view of the world after the exposure of Tartuffe, then his mother, the old woman Pernel, a stupidly pious supporter of inert patriarchal views, never saw the true face of Tartuffe.
The younger generation, represented in the comedy, which immediately saw the true face of Tartuffe, is united by the maid Dorina, who has long and faithfully served in the house of Orgon and is loved and respected here. Her wisdom, common sense, insight help to find the most appropriate means to fight the cunning rogue.
The comedy "Tartuffe" was of great social importance. In it, Moliere depicted not private family relationships, but the most harmful social vice - hypocrisy. In the Preface to Tartuffe, an important theoretical document, Molière explains the meaning of his play. He affirms the public purpose of comedy, declares that “the task of comedy is to castigate vices, and there should be no exceptions here. The vice of hypocrisy from the state point of view is one of the most dangerous in its consequences. The theater has the ability to counteract vice. It was hypocrisy, according to Moliere's definition, the main state vice of France of his time, that became the object of his satire. In a comedy that evokes laughter and fear, Molière portrayed a deep picture of what was happening in France. Hypocrites like Tartuffe, despots, scammers and avengers, dominate the country with impunity, commit genuine atrocities; lawlessness and violence are the results of their activities. Moliere painted a picture that should have alerted those who ruled the country. And although the ideal king at the end of the play does justice (which was explained by Moliere's naive faith in a just and reasonable monarch), the social situation outlined by Moliere seems threatening.
Moliere the artist, creating "Tartuffe", used a wide variety of means: here you can find elements of farce (Orgon hides under the table), comedies of intrigue (the story of the box with documents), comedies of manners (scenes in the house of a wealthy bourgeois), comedies of characters (dependence of development actions from the nature of the hero). At the same time, Molière's work is a typical classic comedy. All “rules” are strictly observed in it: it is designed not only to entertain, but also to instruct the viewer. In the "Preface" to "Tartuffe" it is said: "You can't catch people like that by depicting their shortcomings. They listen to reproaches with indifference, but they cannot bear ridicule. Comedy in pleasant teaching reproaches people for their shortcomings.
Don Giovanni, or the Stone Guest (1665) was written extremely quickly to improve the affairs of the theater after the ban on Tartuffe. Molière turned to an extraordinarily popular theme, first developed in Spain, of a debauchee who knows no barriers in his pursuit of pleasure. For the first time, Tirso de Molina wrote about Don Juan, using folk sources, Seville chronicles about don Juan Tenorio, a libertine who kidnapped the daughter of Commander Gonzalo de Ulloa, killed him and desecrated his tomb image. Later, this theme attracted the attention of playwrights in Italy and France, who developed it as a legend about an unrepentant sinner, devoid of national and everyday features. Moliere treated this well-known theme in a completely original way, abandoning the religious and moral interpretation of the image of the protagonist. His Don Juan is an ordinary secular person, and the events that happen to him are due to the properties of his nature, and everyday traditions, and social relations. Don Juan of Moliere, who from the very beginning of the play is defined by his servant Sganarelle as "the greatest of all the villains that the earth has ever carried, a monster, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic" (I, 1), is a young daredevil, a rake, who sees no barriers to the manifestation of his vicious personality: he lives according to the principle "everything is allowed." In creating his Don Juan, Moliere denounced not debauchery in general, but the immorality inherent in the French aristocrat of the 17th century; Moliere knew this breed of people well and therefore described his hero very reliably.
Like all the secular dandies of his time, Don Juan lives in debt, borrowing money from the “black bone” he despised - from the bourgeois Dimanche, whom he manages to charm with his courtesy, and then send him out the door without paying the debt. Don Juan freed himself from all moral responsibility. He seduces women, destroys other people's families, cynically strives to corrupt everyone with whom he deals: simple-hearted peasant girls, each of whom he promises to marry, a beggar, to whom he offers gold for blasphemy, Sganarelle, to whom he sets a clear example of the treatment of the creditor Dimansh. The "petty-bourgeois" virtues - marital fidelity and filial respect - cause him only a smile. Don Juan's father, Don Luis, is trying to reason with his son, convincing him that "the title of a nobleman must be justified" by personal "dignities and good deeds," for "noble origin without virtue is nothing," and "virtue is the first sign of nobility." Outraged by the immorality of his son, Don Luis admits that "the son of some housekeeper, if he fair man", he puts "higher than the king's son" if the latter lives like Don Juan (IV, 6). Don Juan interrupts his father only once: “If you sat down, it would be more convenient for you to talk,” but he expresses his cynical attitude towards him with the words: “Oh, you die as soon as possible, it infuriates me that fathers live as long as sons" (IV, 7). Don Juan beats the peasant Piero, to whom he owes his life, in response to his indignation: “Do you think that if you are a master, then you can pester our girls under our noses?” (II, 3). He laughs at Sganarelle's objection: "If you are of a noble family, if you have a blond wig ... a hat with feathers ... then you are smarter for this ... everything is allowed to you, and no one dares to tell you the truth?" (I, 1). Don Juan knows that this is exactly the case: he is placed in special privileged conditions. And he proves in practice the woeful observation of Sganarelle: “When a noble gentleman also bad man, then it's terrible" (I, 1). However, Moliere objectively notes in his hero the intellectual culture characteristic of the nobility. Elegance, wit, courage, beauty - these are also the features of Don Juan, who knows how to charm not only women. Sganarelle, a polysemantic figure (he is both simple and shrewdly intelligent), condemns his master, although he often admires him. Don Juan is smart, he thinks broadly; he is a universal skeptic, laughing at everything - and over love, and over medicine, and over religion. Don Juan is a philosopher, a freethinker. However, the attractive features of Don Juan, combined with his conviction in his right to trample on the dignity of others, only emphasize the vitality of this image.
The main thing for Don Juan, a convinced womanizer, is the desire for pleasure. Not wanting to think about the misadventures that await him, he admits: “I cannot love once, every new object fascinates me ... Nothing can stop my desires. My heart is capable of loving the whole world.” Just as little does he think about the moral meaning of his actions and their consequences for others. Molière portrayed in Don Juan one of those secular freethinkers of the 17th century who justified their immoral behavior with a certain philosophy: they understood pleasure as the constant satisfaction of sensual desires. At the same time, they openly despised the church and religion. For Don Juan there is no afterlife, hell, heaven. He only believes that two plus two equals four. Sganarelle accurately noticed the superficiality of this bravado: “There are such scoundrels in the world who debauch for no one knows why and build freethinkers out of themselves, because they believe that it suits them.” However, the superficial secular libertinage, so widespread in France in the 1660s, in Moliere's Don Juan does not exclude genuine philosophical freethinking: a convinced atheist, he came to such views through a developed intellect freed from dogmas and prohibitions. And his ironically colored logic in a dispute with Sganarelle on philosophical themes convinces the reader and disposes in his favor. One of attractive features Don Juan's sincerity remains throughout most of the play. He is not a prude, he does not try to portray himself better than he is, and in general he values \u200b\u200bthe opinions of others a little. In the scene with the beggar (III, 2), mocking him to his heart's content, he still gives him gold "not for Christ's sake, but out of philanthropy." However, in the fifth act, a striking change takes place with him: Don Juan becomes a hypocrite. The well-worn Sganarelle exclaims in horror: “What a man, what a man!” Pretense, the mask of piety that Don Juan puts on, is nothing more than an advantageous tactic; she allows him to extricate himself from seemingly hopeless situations; reconcile with his father, on whom he financially depends, safely avoid a duel with the brother of Elvira, who was abandoned by him. Like many in his social circle, he only assumed the appearance of a decent person. In his own words, hypocrisy has become a "fashionable privileged vice", covering up any sins, and fashionable vices are regarded as virtues. Continuing the theme raised in Tartuffe, Moliere shows the general character of hypocrisy, widespread in different classes and officially encouraged. The French aristocracy was also involved in it.
Creating "Don Giovanni", Moliere followed not only the old Spanish plot, but also the methods of building a Spanish comedy with its alternation of tragic and comic scenes, the rejection of the unity of time and place, the violation of the unity language style(the speech of the characters here is more individualized than in any other play by Molière). The character structure of the protagonist is also more complex. And yet, despite these partial deviations from the strict canons of the poetics of classicism, Don Juan remains, on the whole, a classicist comedy, the main purpose of which is the fight against human vices, the formulation of moral and social problems, the image of generalized, typified characters.
A petty bourgeois in the nobility (1670) was written directly by order of Louis XIV. When in 1669, as a result of Colbert's policy of establishing diplomatic and economic relations with the countries of the East, the Turkish embassy arrived in Paris, the king received it with fabulous luxury. However, the Turks, with their Muslim restraint, expressed no admiration for this splendor. The offended king wanted to see a spectacle on the stage in which one could laugh at Turkish ceremonies. Such is the external impetus to the creation of the play. Initially, Moliere came up with the scene of initiation approved by the king into the dignity of "mamamushi", from which the whole plot of the comedy later grew. At the center of it, he placed a narrow-minded and conceited tradesman, who at all costs wants to become a nobleman. This makes him easily believe that the son of the Turkish Sultan allegedly wants to marry his daughter.
In the era of absolutism, society was divided into "yard" and "city". Throughout the 17th century we observe in the "city" a constant attraction to the "court": buying posts, landed property (which was encouraged by the king, as it replenished the ever-empty treasury), fawning, assimilating noble manners, language and mores, the bourgeois tried to get closer to those from whom they separated bourgeois origin. The nobility, which experienced economic and moral decline, retained, however, its privileged position. His prestige, built up over the centuries, his arrogance, and even if often external culture, subjugated the bourgeoisie, which in France had not yet reached maturity and had not developed a class consciousness. Observing the relationship between these two classes, Moliere wanted to show the power of the nobility over the minds of the bourgeoisie, which was based on the superiority of the noble culture and the low level of development of the bourgeoisie; at the same time, he wanted to free the bourgeois from this power, to sober them up. Depicting people of the third estate, the bourgeois, Molière divides them into three groups: those who were characterized by patriarchy, inertia, conservatism; people of a new type, possessing a sense of their own dignity, and, finally, those who imitate the nobility, which has a detrimental effect on their psyche. Among these latter is the protagonist of The Tradesman in the Nobility, Mr. Jourdain.
This is a man completely captured by one dream - to become a nobleman. The opportunity to approach noble people is happiness for him, all his ambition is to achieve similarity with them, his whole life is the desire to imitate them. The thought of the nobility takes possession of him completely, in this mental blindness of his, he loses all correct idea of the world. He acts without reasoning, to his own detriment. He reaches mental baseness and begins to be ashamed of his parents. He is fooled by everyone who wants to; he is robbed by teachers of music, dancing, fencing, philosophy, tailors and various apprentices. Rudeness, bad manners, ignorance, vulgarity of the language and manners of Mr. Jourdain comically contrast with his claims to noble elegance and gloss. But Jourdain causes laughter, not disgust, because, unlike other similar upstarts, he bows to the nobility disinterestedly, out of ignorance, as a kind of dream of beauty.
Mr. Jourdain is opposed by his wife, a true representative of the bourgeoisie. This is a sensible practical woman with self-esteem. She is trying with all her might to resist her husband's mania, his inappropriate claims, and most importantly, to clear the house of uninvited guests who live off Jourdain and exploit his gullibility and vanity. Unlike her husband, she does not have any respect for the title of nobility and prefers to marry her daughter to a man who would be her equal and would not look down on the bourgeois relatives. The younger generation - Jourdain's daughter Lucille and her fiancé Cleont - are people of a new type. Lucille has received a good upbringing, she loves Cleont for his virtues. Cleon is noble, but not by origin, but by character and moral properties: honest, truthful, loving, he can be useful to society and the state.
Who are those whom Jourdain wants to imitate? Count Dorant and Marchioness Dorimena - people noble birth, they have refined manners, captivating politeness. But the count is a poor adventurer, a swindler, ready for any meanness for the sake of money, even pandering. Dorimena, together with Dorant, robs Jourdain. The conclusion that Molière leads the viewer to is obvious: let Jourdain be ignorant and simple, let him be ridiculous, selfish, but he is an honest man, and there is nothing to despise him for. In moral terms, Jourdain, gullible and naive in his dreams, is higher than aristocrats. So the comedy-ballet, the original purpose of which was to entertain the king in his castle of Chambord, where he went hunting, became, under the pen of Molière, a satirical, social work.
In the work of Molière, there are several themes that he repeatedly addressed, developing and deepening them. Among them are the theme of hypocrisy (“Tartuffe”, “Don Giovanni”, “Misanthrope”, “The Imaginary Sick”, etc.), the theme of the tradesman in the nobility (“School of Wives”, “George Danden”, “The tradesman in the nobility” ), the theme of family, marriage, upbringing, education. The first comedy on this subject, as we remember, was "The Ridiculous Pretenders", it was continued in the "School of Husbands" and "School of Wives", and completed in the comedy "Learned Women" (1672), which ridicules the outward passion for science and philosophy in Parisian salons second half of XVII V. Moliere shows how a secular literary salon turns into a "scientific academy", where vanity and pedantry are valued, where they try to cover up the vulgarity and barrenness of the mind with claims for the correctness and elegance of the language (II, 6, 7; III, 2). A superficial fascination with the philosophy of Plato or the mechanics of Descartes prevents women from fulfilling their immediate basic duties of wife, mother, mistress of the house. Molière saw this as a social danger. He laughs at the behavior of his pseudo-scientific heroines - Filamintha, Belize, Armande. But he admires Henrietta, a woman of a clear sober mind and by no means ignorant. Of course, Moliere does not ridicule here science and philosophy, but a fruitless game in them, which is detrimental to a practical, sound outlook on life.
No wonder Boileau, who highly appreciated the work of Moliere, accused his friend of being "too popular." The folk character of Molière's comedies, which manifested itself both in their content and in their form, was based primarily on the folk traditions of the farce. Moliere followed these traditions in his literary and acting work, maintaining a passion for the democratic theater all his life. The nationality of Molière's work is also evidenced by his folk characters. These are, first of all, the servants: Mascaril, Sganarelle, Sozy, Scapin, Dorina, Nicole, Toinette. It was in their images that Molière expressed character traits national French character: cheerfulness, sociability, friendliness, wit, dexterity, prowess, common sense.
In addition, in his comedies, Molière depicted peasants and peasant life with genuine sympathy (recall the scenes in the village in The Unwilling Doctor or Don Juan). The language of Moliere's comedies also testifies to their true nationality: it often contains folklore material - proverbs, sayings, beliefs, folk songs, which attracted Molière with spontaneity, simplicity, sincerity (“Misanthrope”, “Participant in the nobility”). Molière boldly used dialectisms, folk patois (dialect), various vernaculars, turns that were incorrect from the point of view of strict grammar. Wits, folk humor give Molière's comedies a unique charm.
Describing the work of Molière, researchers often argue that in his works he "went beyond the limits of classicism." In this case, they usually refer to deviations from the formal rules of classicist poetics (for example, in Don Juan or some comedies of a farcical type). One cannot agree with this. The rules for constructing comedy were not interpreted as strictly as the rules for tragedy, and allowed for wider variation. Molière is the most significant and most characteristic comedian of classicism. Sharing the principles of classicism as an artistic system, Moliere made genuine discoveries in the field of comedy. He demanded to faithfully reflect reality, preferring to go from direct observation of life phenomena to the creation of typical characters. These characters under the playwright's pen acquire social certainty; many of his observations therefore turned out to be prophetic: such, for example, is the depiction of the peculiarities of bourgeois psychology.
Satire in Moliere's comedies has always contained a social meaning. The comedian did not paint portraits, did not record minor phenomena of reality. He created comedies that depicted the life and customs of modern society, but for Moliere it was, in essence, a form of expression of social protest, the demand for social justice.
At the heart of his worldview lay experimental knowledge, concrete observations of life, which he preferred to abstract speculation. In his views on morality, Molière was convinced that only following natural laws is the key to a person's rational and moral behavior. But he wrote comedies, which means that his attention was attracted by violations of the norms of human nature, deviations from natural instincts in the name of far-fetched values. Two types of “fools” are depicted in his comedies: those who do not know their nature and its laws (Moliere tries to teach and sober such people), and those who deliberately cripple their own or someone else’s nature (he considers such people dangerous and requiring isolation) . According to the playwright, if a person's nature is perverted, he becomes a moral deformity; false, false ideals underlie false, perverted morality. Molière demanded genuine moral rigor, a reasonable limitation of the individual; freedom of the individual for him is not blindly following the call of nature, but the ability to subordinate one's nature to the requirements of the mind. Therefore it goodies reasonable and sensible.
3. The work of Molière. Genre features of his works. Tradition and innovation.
Comedy Tradition: Carnival(native, popular with the common people) and dell arte(Italian, borrowed). The comic is associated either with a change of position or a farce. There are no characters. Nowhere. In general, Moliere is trying to combine farce as the basis of the viewer's interest and dell "arte, as the basis of dramaturgy. He created high comedy and sitcom. He also rejected the trinity, but this is not accurate.
Chronologically Molière (1622 - 1673) stands between Corneille and Racine. Moliere (real name - Poquelin, changed him so as not to disgrace his father with his sinful acting profession) received an inheritance, tried to create his own theater, went bankrupt. He also rode for 13 years with a traveling troupe. In Paris, he comes up with a formula “teaching while entertaining”. Which is an absolutely classic principle.
Molière starts with a successful play “Funny Preciosa”.
The first important quality of Molière's dramaturgy. Writes on topical issues. Topicality in dell "arte was beyond drama, beyond the plot. Although they went to watch dell" arte just for her sake. For Molière, it becomes the main theme and the main intrigue.
The second important quality. Precise literature is a kind of French baroque. It lies in the abundance of sweet words. She cultivates a return to the knightly tradition, and in general the image of a lady in general. On the one hand, this culture social problem, but on the other hand, Moliere sees an inflection here (they say in high language about some low things, fi). AND Moliere argues against the fact that the problem of precision has gone beyond expediency. In general, he brings to the fore some topic, but criticizes its use.
Molière analyzes one problem from different angles in three plays written in a row: Tartuffe, Don Giovanni, Misanthrope.
“Tartuffe" (1664).
The play was banned (because of the image of the hypocritical/precise Tartuffe, who supposedly offends the church), Molière sought to return the play to the stage for a long time and eventually achieved it.
The play is based on the family conflict between Orgon and his maman against Tatruff. There is also a love conflict. Molière does not refuse the comedy dell'Art story and weaves it into the play. Tartuffe unites both conflicts, although he does not participate in the conflicts themselves, everything is around him. It is not a plot, but an ideological image.
The image of Tartuffe is created before the very appearance of Tartuffe (before the second act). To destroy it in the end, of course. Before he appeared should seem like a thin good guy, but in reality he is a plump lecher and a hypocrite.
Since 1530, France has been waging a revolutionary religious war. More recently, the Thirty Years' Religious War. As part of this religious opposition, the monk Tartuffe should be considered good, but in fact he is somehow not. Tartuffe promotes asceticism to everyone, although he does quite the opposite. Moliere plays on this contrast, on the discrepancy between words and deeds. Tartuffe is a hypocrite, but Don Juan, for example, is not. Tartuffe believes that this is the only way to adapt to life. And he is a monk precisely for the sake of a vivid image. Because it's topical. Moliere does not oppose religious ideals, but against bad priests and the fact that values become an object that can be manipulated.
Historical context: French absolutism finally took shape when Louis 14 refused ministers. This was preceded by a Fronde, saying that the highest aristocracy tried to prevent this absolute absolutism. So that Richelieu and Mazarin could influence some decisions. All this was accompanied by an internal active struggle between Parliament and the Queen. But in the end, the front disappeared. One of the leading figures was the Prince of Condé, known for his cunning. When it was necessary, he portrayed the world, when it was not necessary, he spat on everything, up to joining the Spanish army, that is, political betrayal.
The first violation of classical norms is the choice of the upper class as heroes for comedy. At the end even the king(!) appears.
The second violation - two storylines, the unity of action is not preserved.
The third violation is that the low comedy genre is written in verse, not prose.
Comedy tricks:
The decisive dramatic role in the love conflict is played by the maid Dorina - the dell "arte tradition.
Eavesdropping (Dorina directly, Doris from the closet and Orgon under the table - a variety of Molière).
Potential farcical devices such as fighting are shown as a hint of a fight. He makes them more aesthetically acceptable to a high audience.
Molière created high comedy and added character to it. It turned out a new type of comedy - a comedy of characters. Molière returns the original comedic content.
“Don Juan" (1665) and "The Misanthrope" (1666).
It is important to contrast generations.
“Being a nobleman is not enough, you need to justify this title with virtuous qualities” (c) Don Luis - father.
“You need to live as you want” (c) Don Juan is a son.
Unlike Tartuffe, heroes cannot be divided into positive and negative. Since character presupposes the presence of such and such traits. Cleanthe and Tartuffe can be considered protagonist and antagonist at the level of the idea. In The Misanthrope, these are Alceste and Célimène. Resonator - Filint. Philintus, a friend of Alceste, is the "golden mean" between the "bad" Alceste (cynic) and the "good" Orontes (gentle poet). (Both young men are in love with the same girl - Célimène, but Alceste's worldview does not allow him to stay with her in Paris amid the court atmosphere of constant lies, hypocrisy and flattery.)
There is no antagonist in Don Juan. Nothing, except for the final, nothing is opposed to the good life of Don Juan. It's more like a set of scenes about his good life. There is no resonant position, except for the monologue of the pope, which does not even change anything. Sganarelle's attempt to be a reasoner fails because he looks like Tartuffe. And his thoughts are determined by the strict look of Don Juan. The value system characteristic of classic comedy is blurred. Don Juan is a 100% feeling, he does not build anything out of himself, he does what he wants. Tartuffe pretends to be a good priest and does what he wants. His goal is cover. Alceste suggests putting a good goal at the forefront. And Alceste failed a little.
Highly Intelligent Conclusion: Tartuffe uses moral values, Don Juan does not accept them in his life, Alceste is going to defend them to the end. Moliere shows models and options for dealing with values, but does not say what exactly to do with them.
Molière's comedy
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Molière) (1622-1673) was the first to make comedy look like a genre equal to tragedy. He synthesized the best achievements of comedy from Aristophanes to contemporary comedy of classicism, including the experience of Cyrano de Bergerac, whom scientists often mention among the direct creators of the first examples of national French comedy.
The life and creative path of Molière have been studied enough. It is known that the future comedian was born in the family of a court upholsterer. However, he did not want to inherit his father's business, refusing the corresponding privileges in 1643.
Thanks to his grandfather, the boy got acquainted with the theater early. Jean Baptiste was seriously passionate about him and dreamed of becoming an actor. After graduating from the Jesuit school in Clermont (1639) and receiving a lawyer's diploma in 1641 in Orleans, in 1643 he organized the Brilliant Theater troupe, which included his friends and associates for many years - Mademoiselle Madeleine Bejart, Mademoiselle Dupary, Mademoiselle Debry and others. Dreaming of a career as a tragic actor, the young Poquelin takes the name Molière as a theatrical pseudonym. However, as a tragic actor, Moliere did not take place. After a series of setbacks in the fall of 1645, the Brilliant Theater was closed.
The years 1645-1658 are the years of wanderings of the Molière troupe in the French provinces, enriching the playwright with unforgettable impressions and observations on life. During the journey, the first comedies were born, the writing of which immediately revealed Moliere's talent as a future great comedian. Among his first successful experiments were "Naughty, or Everything at random" (1655) and "Love Annoyance" (1656).
1658 - Molière and his troupe return to Paris and play before the king. Louis XVI allows them to stay in Paris and appoints his brother patron of the troupe. The troupe is given the building of the Petit Bourbon Palace.
Since 1659, with the production of "The Ridiculous Pretenders", the glory of the playwright Molière actually begins.
In the life of Molière, the comedian, there were ups and downs. Despite all the controversy surrounding his personal life and relationships with the court, interest in his creations still does not fade, which have become a kind of criterion for high creativity for subsequent generations, such as the "School of Husbands" (1661), "School of Wives" (1662), "Tartuffe" (1664), "Don Giovanni, or the Stone Guest" (1665), "The Misanthrope" (1666), "The Reluctant Doctor" (1666), "The Tradesman in the Nobility" (1670) and others.
Studying the Moliere traditions in the works of writers of other centuries, such scientists as, for example, S. Mokulsky, G. Boyadzhiev, J. Bordonov, R. Brae, tried to unravel the phenomenon of Moliere, the nature and content of the funny in his works. E. Faguet argued: "Moliere is the apostle of "common sense", that is, those generally accepted views of the public, which he had before his eyes and whom he wanted to please." Interest in Molière is not weakening in modern literary criticism either. In recent years, works have appeared devoted not only to the above issues, but also to the issues of romanticizing the classicist conflict (A. Karelsky), assessing the theater of Molière in the concept of M. Bulgakov (A. Grubin).
In the work of Molière, comedy received further development like a genre. Such forms of it as "high" comedy, comedy-"school" (N. Erofeeva's term), comedy-ballet and others were formed. G. Boyadzhiev in the book “Molière: Historical Ways of the Formation of the High Comedy Genre” pointed out that the norms of the new genre emerged as the comedy approached reality and, as a result, acquired a problematic determined by social problems objectively existing in reality itself. Based on the experience of ancient masters, commedia dell'arte and farce, the classic comedy, according to the scientist, received higher development at Molière.
Moliere outlined his views on theater and comedy in the polemical plays Critique of the School for Wives (1663), Impromptu of Versailles (1663), in the Preface to Tartuffe (1664) and others. The main principle of the writer's aesthetics is "to teach while entertaining". Standing up for a true reflection of reality in art, Molière insisted on a meaningful perception theatrical action, the subject of which he most often chose the most typical situations, phenomena, characters. At the same time, the playwright addressed critics and spectators: “Let's not accept what is inherent in everyone, and we will extract as much benefit from the lesson as possible, without showing that we are talking about Us".
Even in the early works of Moliere, according to G. Boyadzhiev, "understood the need to transfer romantic heroes to the world of ordinary people." Hence the plots of "Funny Pretenders", "School of Wives", "School of Husbands" and including "Tartuffe".
In parallel with the development of the genre of "high" comedy in the work of Molière, a comedy-"school" is being formed. This is already evidenced by the "Funny coynesses" (1659). In the play, the playwright turned to the analysis of the norms of aristocratic taste on a specific example, in assessing these norms, focusing on the natural, healthy taste of the people, therefore, he most often turned to his life experience and addressed his sharpest observations and remarks to the parterre.
In general, the concept of "virtue" occupies an important place in Moliere's aesthetics. Ahead of the enlighteners, the playwright raised the question of the role of morality and morality in the organization of a person's private and public life. Most often, Moliere combined both concepts, demanding to depict mores without touching personalities. However, this did not contradict his demand to correctly portray people, to write "from life." Virtue has always been a reflection of morality, and morality has been a generalized concept of the moral paradigm of society. At the same time, virtue as a synonym for morality became a criterion, if not beautiful, then good, positive, exemplary, and therefore moral. And Moliere's humor was also largely determined by the level of development of virtue and its components: honor, dignity, modesty, caution, obedience, and so on, that is, those qualities that characterize a positive and ideal hero.
The playwright drew examples of positive or negative from life, showing on the stage more typical situations, social tendencies and characters than his fellow writers. Molière's innovation was noted by G. Lanson, who wrote: “No truth devoid of comedy, and almost no comedy devoid of truth: here is Molière's formula. Comic and truth are extracted from Molière from the same source, that is, from observations of human types.
Like Aristotle, Molière saw the theater as the "mirror" of society. In his comedies-“schools”, he consolidated Aristophanes’ “alienation effect” through the “learning effect” (N. Erofeeva’s term), which was further developed in the work of the playwright.
The performance - a form of spectacle - was presented as a didactic tool for the viewer. He was supposed to awaken consciousness, the need to argue, and in a dispute, as you know, truth is born. The playwright consistently (but indirectly) offered each viewer a “mirror situation”, in which the ordinary, familiar and everyday was perceived as if from the outside. Several variants of such a situation were assumed: ordinary perception; an unexpected turn of action, when the familiar and understandable became unfamiliar; the emergence of a line of action duplicating the situation, highlighting the possible consequences of the situation presented, and, finally, the ending, the choice of which the viewer must approach. Moreover, the ending of the comedy was one of the possible, although desirable for the author. It is not known how the real life situation played out on the stage will be evaluated. Moliere respected the choice of each spectator, his personal opinion. The characters were passed through a series of moral, philosophical and psychological lessons, which gave the plot the ultimate content, and the plot itself, as a carrier of information, became an occasion for a substantive conversation and analysis of a specific situation or phenomenon in people's lives. Both in the "high" comedy and in the "school" comedy, the didactic principle of classicism was fully realized. However, Molière went further. Addressing the audience at the end of the play meant an invitation to discussion, and we see this, for example, in The School of Husbands, when Lisette, turning to the stalls, says the following verbatim:
You, if you know werewolf husbands, Send them at least to our school.
The invitation “to our school” removes didacticism as the line between the author-teacher and the viewer-student. The playwright does not separate himself from the audience. He focuses on the phrase "to us." In comedy, Moliere often used the semantic possibilities of pronouns. So, Sganarelle, while he is convinced that he is right, proudly says to his brother “my lessons”, but as soon as he feels anxiety, he immediately informs Arist about the “consequence” of “our lessons”.
In creating the "School of Husbands", Molière followed Gessendy, who affirmed the primacy of experience over abstract logicalization, and Terence, in whose comedy "Brothers" the problem of true education was solved. In Molière, as in Terence, two brothers argue about the content of education. A dispute flares up between Arist and Sganarelle over how and by what means to achieve a good upbringing of Leonora and Isabella in order to marry them in the future and be happy.
Recall that the concept of "l "? ducation" - "upbringing, education" - appeared in the secular dictionary of Europeans from the 15th century. It comes from the Latin educatio and denotes the process and means of influencing a person in the course of education, upbringing. We observe both concepts in comedy " School of Husbands.” The starting points that determined the essence of the dispute between the brothers were two scenes - the second in the first act and the fifth in the second.
On the subject of the dispute, Molière was the first to allow Ariste to speak. He is older than Sganarelle, but more capable of taking risks, adheres to progressive views on education, allows Leonora some liberties, such as visiting the theater, balls. He is convinced that his pupil should go through a "secular school." The “secular school” is more valuable than edification, since the knowledge gained in it is tested by experience. Trust built on reasonableness should give a positive result. In doing so, Moliere destroyed the traditional notion of an elderly conservative guardian. The younger brother of Arista Sganarelle turned out to be such a conservative. In his opinion, education is, first of all, rigor, control. Virtue and freedom cannot be compatible. Sganarelle reads notations to Isabella and thereby inspires in her the desire to deceive him, although this desire is not expressed openly by the girl. The appearance of Valera is a straw that Isabella grabs at and eludes her guardian. The whole paradox lies in the fact that the young guardian is not able to understand the needs of the young pupil. It is no coincidence that in the finale the comic is replaced by the dramatic. The “lesson” presented by Isabella to the guardian is quite natural: a person must be trusted, his will must be respected, otherwise a protest grows, taking various forms.
The spirit of libertinage determines not only the actions of Isabella, but also the behavior of Aristo and Leonora. Like Terentius, Moliere uses “liberalitas” not as in the Golden Age - “liberalis” - “generous”, but in the sense of “artes liberales, homo liberalis” - one whose behavior is worthy of the title of a free man, noble (Z. Korsh).
Sganarelle's ideal idea of education is destroyed. As a result, Leonora turns out to be virtuous, since her behavior is guided by a feeling of gratitude. The main thing for herself, she defines obedience to the guardian, whose honor and dignity she sincerely respects. However, Molière does not condemn Isabella's act either. It shows her natural need for happiness and freedom. The only way to achieve happiness and freedom for a girl is deceit.
For the playwright, virtue as the end result of the educational process was integral part chains of concepts "school" - "lesson" - "education (upbringing)" - "school". There is a direct connection between the title and the ending. The "school" Lisette speaks of at the end of the play is life itself. It is necessary to master certain norms and rules of behavior, communication skills in order to always remain a respected person. This is helped by the practice-tested "lessons of the secular school." They are based on the universal concepts of good and evil. Education and virtue do not depend on age, but on a person's outlook on life. Reasonable and selfish are incompatible. Selfishness leads to a negative effect. This was fully proved by Sganarelle's behavior. The lesson appears not only as the basis of the structure of the play's action, but also as the result of the characters' training in the "school of human communication".
Already in the first comedy-"school" Moliere discovered a new look at the ethics of his contemporary society. In assessing reality, the playwright was guided by a rationalistic analysis of life, examining specific examples of the most typical situations and characters.
In The School for Wives, the playwright's main focus was on the "lesson." The word "lesson" is used seven times in all key scenes of the comedy. And this is no coincidence. Moliere more clearly defines the subject of analysis - guardianship. The purpose of the comedy is to give advice to all guardians who have forgotten about age, about trust, about true virtue, which is the basis of guardianship in general.
As the action develops, we observe how the concept of “lesson” expands and deepens, as well as the situation itself, which is familiar to viewers from everyday life. Guardianship acquires the features of a socially dangerous phenomenon. In confirmation of this, Arnolf's selfish plans sound, to achieve which, under the guise of a virtuous person, he is ready to give a narrowly focused education to Agnes, limiting her rights as a person. For the pupil, Arnolf chooses the position of a recluse. This put her life in complete dependence on the will of the guardian. Virtue, about which Arnolf talks so much, actually becomes a means of enslaving another person. From the very concept of “virtue”, the guardian is only interested in such components as obedience, repentance, humility, and justice and mercy are simply ignored by Arnolf. He is sure that he has already favored Agnes, which he does not hesitate to remind her of from time to time. He considers himself entitled to decide the fate of the girl. In the foreground is the ethical dissonance in the relationship of the characters, which objectively explains the finale of the comedy.
In the course of the development of the action, the viewer comprehends the meaning of the word "lesson" as an ethical concept. First of all, a “lesson-instruction” is developed. So, Georgette, fawning over the owner, assures him that he will remember all his lessons. Strict execution of the lessons, that is, instructions, rules, requires Arnolf from Agnes. He insists that she memorize the rules of virtue: "You must learn these lessons with your heart." A lesson-instruction, a task, an example to follow - of course, is little understood by a young person who does not know how it could be otherwise. And even when Agnes resists the lessons of the guardian, she does not fully realize her protest.
The action culminates in the fifth act. Surprises determine the last scenes, the main of which is Agnes's reproach, expressed to the guardian: “And you are the man who says that he wants to take me as his wife. I followed your lessons, and you taught me to get married to wash away sin.” At the same time, “your lessons” cease to be just lessons-instructions. In the words of Agnes - a challenge to the guardian, who deprived her of a normal upbringing and secular society. However, Agnes' statement comes as a surprise only to Arnolf. Spectators watch as this protest gradually grows. Agnes's words lead to the understanding of the moral lesson received by the girl in life.
Arnolf also receives a moral lesson, which is closely connected with the “warning lesson”. This lesson in the first act is taught by Arnolf's friend Chrysald. In a conversation with Arnolf, he, poking fun at a friend, draws the image of a cuckold husband. Arnolf is afraid to become just such a husband. He is no longer a young man hardened bachelor who decides to marry, hopes that he will be able to avoid the fate of many husbands, that his life experience has given a lot good examples and he can avoid mistakes. However, the fear of tarnishing one's honor turns into a passion. She is also driven by Arnolf's desire to isolate Agnes from secular life, which, in his opinion, is full of dangerous temptations. Arnolf repeats Sganarelle's mistake, and the "warning lesson" sounds for all forgotten guardians.
Finally, the name of the comedy is also clarified, which acts both as a subject (guardianship) and as a teaching method, reminiscent of the laws of Nature, that they cannot be rejected, and also sounds like advice, a warning to husbands who, like Arnolf, dare violate the natural human right to freedom and free choice. "School" again appeared as a system of methods of life, the correct development of which protects a person from a ridiculous situation and dramas.
Summing up the first results, we can say that already in the work of Molière, the comedy-“school” as a genre form was actively developed. Its task is to educate society. However, this education, in contrast to moralistic dramaturgy, is devoid of open didacticism, it is based on a rationalistic analysis aimed at changing the traditional ideas of the viewer. Education was not only a process during which the viewer's worldview changed, but also a means of influencing his consciousness and the consciousness of society as a whole.
The heroes of the comedy-“school” were the most characteristic example of passion, character or phenomenon in social life. They went through a series of moral, ideological and even psychological lessons, mastered certain communication skills, which gradually formed a system of new ethical concepts forcing a different perception of the everyday world. At the same time, the “lesson” in the comedy-“school” was revealed in almost all historically established lexical meanings - from “task” to “conclusion”. The moral expediency of a person's actions begins to determine his usefulness in life. individual family and even the whole society.
The main concept of comedy-“school” becomes “virtue”. Moliere associates it primarily with morality. The playwright introduces into the content of "virtue" such concepts as "rationality", "trust", "honor", "free choice". “Virtue” also acts as a criterion of “beautiful” and “ugly” in people’s actions, largely determining the dependence of their behavior on social environment. In this Molière was ahead of the enlighteners.
The “mirror” situation helped to overcome the dogmatism of the ordinary worldview and through the method of “alienation” to achieve the desired “learning effect”. Actually stage action drew only a model of behavior as a clear example for a rationalistic analysis by the viewer of reality.
Molière's comedy was closely connected with life. Therefore, there is often a dramatic element in it. Its carriers are characters who, as a rule, embody certain personal qualities in their characters that are in conflict with generally accepted norms. Serious social conflicts often sound on stage. In their decision, a special place is given to characters of simple origin - servants. They also act as carriers of healthy principles of social life. A. S. Pushkin wrote: “Let us note that high comedy is not based solely on laughter, but on the development of characters, and that it often comes close to tragedy.” This remark can be fully attributed to the comedy-“school”, which develops in the work of Molière in parallel with the “high” comedy.
The classicist Moliere spoke out against the pomposity and unnaturalness of the classic theater. His characters spoke in ordinary language. Throughout his creative life, the playwright followed his demand to truthfully reflect life. The bearers of common sense, as a rule, were young characters. The truth of life was exposed through the collision of such heroes with the main satirical character, as well as through the totality of collisions and relationships of characters in comedy.
Deviating in many ways from strict classicist norms, Moliere nevertheless remained within the framework of this artistic system. His writings are rationalistic in spirit; all the characters are one-linear, devoid of specific historical details and details. And yet, it was his comic images that became a vivid reflection of the processes associated with the main trends in the development of French society in the second half of the 17th century.
The features of the "high" comedy were most clearly manifested in the famous play "Tartuffe". A. S. Pushkin, comparing the work of Shakespeare and Moliere, noted: “The faces created by Shakespeare are not, like those of Moliere, types of such and such a passion, such and such a vice; but living beings, filled with many passions, many vices; circumstances develop before the viewer their diverse and multifaceted characters. Molière is stingy - and only in Shakespeare Shylock is stingy, quick-witted, vindictive, child-loving, witty. In Molière, the hypocrite drags after the wife of his benefactor, the hypocrite, accepts the estate for preservation, the hypocrite; asks for a glass of water, the hypocrite." Pushkin's words became a textbook, because they very accurately conveyed the essence of the character of the central character of the play, which determined a new stage in the development of French national comedy.
The play was first presented at a festival in Versailles on May 12, 1664. “The comedy about Tartuffe began with general enthusiastic and favorable attention, which immediately gave way to the greatest amazement. By the end of the third act, the audience no longer knew what to think, and some thought flashed through that maybe Monsieur de Molière was not quite in his right mind. This is how M.A. Bulgakov describes the reaction of the audience to the performance. According to the memoirs of contemporaries and in research Literature XVII century, including the history of the theater, it is noted that the play immediately caused a scandal. It was directed against the Jesuit "Society of Holy Gifts", which meant that Molière was invading an area of relationships forbidden to everyone, including the king himself. At the insistence of Cardinal Hardouin de Beaumont de Perefix and under the onslaught of indignant courtiers, Tartuffe was banned from staging. For several years, the playwright reworked the comedy: he removed quotes from the Gospel from the text, changed the ending, removed church clothes from Tartuffe and presented him as just a pious person, and also softened certain moments and forced Cleante to utter a monologue about truly pious people. After a single production in a revised form in 1667, the play finally returned to the stage only in 1669, that is, after the death of the king's mother, a fanatical Catholic.
So, the play was written in connection with specific events in the social life of France. They are clothed by Molière in the form of a neo-Attic comedy. It is no coincidence that the characters bear ancient names - Orgon, Tartuffe. The playwright wanted first of all to ridicule the members of the "Society of Holy Gifts", who profit from the confidence of their fellow citizens. Among the main inspirers of the "Society" was the mother of the king. The Inquisition did not hesitate to enrich itself by denunciations against the gullible French. However, the comedy turned into a denunciation of Christian piety as such, and the central character Tartuffe became a household word for a bigot and a hypocrite.
The image of Tartuffe is built on the contradiction between words and deeds, between appearance and essence. In words, he “scourges all sinful things publicly” and wants only that “what heaven pleases.” But in fact, he does all sorts of baseness and meanness. He constantly lies, encourages Orgon to bad deeds. So, Orgon expels his son from the house because Damis speaks out against the marriage of Tartuffe with Mariana. Tartuffe indulges in gluttony, commits treason by fraudulently taking possession of the donation to the property of his benefactor. The maid Dorina characterizes this "saint" as follows:
... Tartuffe is a hero, an idol. The world should marvel at his virtues; His deeds are miraculous, And whatever he says is a judgment from heaven. But, seeing such a simpleton, He fools him with his game without end; He made hypocrisy a source of profit And he is preparing to teach us while we are alive.
If we carefully analyze the actions of Tartuffe, we will find that all seven deadly sins are present. At the same time, the method used by Molière in constructing the image of the central character is peculiar.
The image of Tartuffe is built only on hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is proclaimed through every word, deed, gesture. There are no other traits in Tartuffe's character. Moliere himself wrote that in this image, from beginning to end, Tartuffe does not utter a single word that would not depict a bad person to the audience. Drawing this character, the playwright also resorts to satirical hyperbolization: Tartuffe is so pious that when he crushed a flea during prayer, he apologizes to God for having killed a living creature.
To highlight the sanctimonious beginning in Tartuffe, Molière builds two scenes in succession. In the first, the "holy man" Tartuffe, embarrassed, asks the maid Dorina to cover her cleavage, but after a while he seeks to seduce Orgon's wife Elmira. Molière's strength is in what he showed - Christian morality, piety not only do not interfere with sinning, but even help to cover these sins. So, in the third scene of the third act, using the technique of "tearing off the masks", Molière draws the viewer's attention to how deftly Tartuffe uses the "word of God" to justify the passion for adultery. Thus, he exposes himself.
Tartuffe's passionate monologue ends with a confession that finally deprives the halo of holiness of his pious nature. Moliere, through the mouth of Tartuffe, debunks both the mores of high society and the mores of churchmen, which differ little from each other.
Tartuffe's sermons are as dangerous as his passions. They change a person, his world to such an extent that, like Orgon, he ceases to be himself. Orgon himself confesses to the dispute with Cleanthes:
... Whoever follows him, tastes the blessed world, And all creatures in the universe are an abomination to him. I became completely different from these conversations with him: From now on I have no attachments, And I no longer value anything in the world; Let my brother, mother, wife and children die, I will be upset by this so much, she-she-she!
Comedy reasoner Cleante acts not only as an observer of the events taking place in Orgon's house, but also tries to change the situation. He openly throws accusations against Tartuffe and similar saints. His famous monologue is a verdict on hypocrisy and hypocrisy. Such as Tartuffe, Cleante opposes people with a pure heart, lofty ideals.
The maid Dorina also confronts Tartuffe, defending the interests of her masters. Dorina is the most witty character in comedy. She literally showers Tartuffe with ridicule. Her irony also falls on the owner, because Orgon is a dependent person, too trusting, which is why Tartuffe deceives him so easily.
Dorina personifies a healthy folk principle. The fact that the most active fighter against Tartuffe is the bearer of popular common sense is deeply symbolic. It is no coincidence that Cleanthe, who personifies the enlightened mind, becomes Dorina's ally. This was the utopianism of Molière. The playwright believed that evil in society could be resisted by the union of popular common sense and enlightened reason.
Dorina also helps Mariana in her struggle for happiness. She openly expresses her opinion to the owner about his plans to marry his daughter to Tartuffe, although this was not accepted among the servants. The squabble between Orgon and Dorina draws attention to the problem of family education and the role of the father in it. Orgon considers himself entitled to control the children, their destinies, so he makes a decision without a shadow of a doubt. The unlimited power of the father is condemned by almost all the characters in the play, but only Dorina, in her usual caustic manner, sharply castigates Orgon, so the remark accurately captures the attitude of the master towards the statements of the maid: “Orgon is always ready to slap Dorina in the face and with every word that he says to his daughter turns around to look at Dorina…”
Events develop in such a way that the utopian nature of the comedy's finale becomes obvious. He was, of course, more truthful in the first version. Monsieur Loyal came to fulfill the court order - to vacate the house from the whole family, since now Monsieur Tartuffe is the owner in this building. Moliere includes a dramatic element in the final scenes, revealing to the limit the grief in which the family found itself at the whim of Orgon. The seventh manifestation of the fifth act finally makes it possible to understand the essence of Tartuffe's nature, which is now revealed as a terrible and cruel person. To Orgon, who sheltered this hypocrite in his house, Tartuffe arrogantly declares:
Be quiet, my sir! Where are you running like that? You have a short way to a new lodging for the night, And, by the will of the king, I will arrest you.
Molière boldly enough promulgated what was forbidden - by the will of the king, the members of the "Society of Holy Gifts" were guided in their activities. I. Glikman notes the presence of a political motive in action, connected with the past fate of the heroes of the play. In particular, the fifth act mentions a certain chest with documents of state importance, which Orgon's relatives did not know about. These are the documents of the emigrant Argas, who fled from government repression. As it turns out, Tartuffe took possession of the chest of papers by deceit and presented them to the king, seeking the arrest of Orgon. That is why he behaves so unceremoniously when an officer and a bailiff come to Orgon's house. According to Tartuffe, he was sent to the house of Orgon by the king. So, all the evil in the state comes from the monarch! Such a ending could not but cause a scandal. However, already in the revised version, the text of the play contains an element of miracle. At the moment when Tartuffe, confident in his success, demands that the royal order be put in motion, the officer unexpectedly asks Tartuffe to follow him to prison. Molière curtsies towards the king. The officer, pointing to Tartuffe, remarks to Orgon how merciful and just the monarch is, how wisely he rules his subjects.
So, in accordance with the requirements of the aesthetics of classicism, good eventually wins, and vice is punished. The finale is the weakest point of the play, but it did not reduce the overall social sound of the comedy, which has not lost its relevance to this day.
Among the comedies that testify to the oppositional views of Molière, one can name the play Don Juan, or the Stone Guest. This is the only play in prose in which the aristocrat Don Juan and peasants, servants, even a beggar and a bandit are equal actors. And each of them has its own characteristic speech. Here Molière, more than in all his plays, departed from classicism. It is also one of the playwright's most revealing comedies.
The play is based on a borrowed plot. It was first introduced into great literature by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina in the comedy The Mischievous Man of Seville. Molière became acquainted with this play through Italian actors who staged it on tour during the 1664 season. Molière, on the other hand, creates an original work, with a frank anti-noble orientation. Every French viewer recognized in Don Juan a familiar type of aristocrat - cynical, dissolute, flaunting his impunity. The morals that Don Juan spoke of reigned at court, especially among the "golden youth" from the entourage of King Louis XIV. Molière's contemporaries called the names of the courtiers, who were famous for debauchery, "courage" and blasphemy, but attempts to guess who the playwright brought under the name of Don Juan were in vain, because main character comedy strikingly resembled many people and no one in particular. And the king himself often set an example of such morals. Numerous frivolous adventures and victories over women's hearts were considered at court as mischief. Molière, on the other hand, looked at the tricks of Don Juan from a different position - from the standpoint of humanism and citizenship. He deliberately refuses the title of the play "The Seville mischievous" because he does not consider Don Juan's behavior to be mischief and innocent pranks.
The playwright boldly breaks the canons of classicism and violates the unity of time and place in order to draw the image of his hero as vividly as possible. The general setting is in Sicily, but each act is accompanied by a remark: the first, "the scene represents the palace," the second, "the scene represents the area on the seashore," the third, "the scene represents the forest," the fourth, "the scene represents Don Giovanni's apartments," and fifth - "the scene represents an open area." This made it possible to show Don Juan in relationships with different people, including representatives of different classes. The aristocrat meets on his way not only Don Carlos and Don Alonso, but also peasants, and a beggar, and the merchant Dimansh. As a result, the playwright succeeds in portraying the most essential features of the "golden youth" from the king's entourage in the character of Don Juan.
Sganarelle gives a complete characterization of his master immediately, in the first appearance of the first act, when he declares to the stableman Guzman:
“... my master Don Juan is the greatest of all villains that the earth has ever worn, a monster, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic who does not believe in heaven, nor in saints, nor in God, nor in the devil who lives like vile cattle, like an Epicurean pig, like a real Sardanapalus, who does not want to listen to Christian teachings and considers everything that we believe in nonsense ”(translated by A. Fedorov). Further action only confirms all of the above.
Don Juan of Moliere is a cynical, cruel man who ruthlessly destroys the women who trusted him. Moreover, the playwright explains the cynicism and cruelty of the character by the fact that he is an aristocrat. Already in the first act of the first phenomenon, this is indicated three times. Sganarelle confesses to Guzman: “When a noble gentleman is also a bad person, it is terrible: I must remain faithful to him, although I am unbearable. Only fear makes me diligent, it restrains my feelings and forces me to approve what is contrary to my soul. Thus, it becomes clear why Sganarelle appears to the viewer as stupid and funny. Fear drives his actions. He pretends to be a fool, hiding his natural wisdom and moral purity behind clownish whims. The image of Sganarelle is intended to shade all the baseness of Don Juan's nature, confident in impunity, because his father is a court aristocrat.
The libertine type gave the playwright fertile ground for exposing moral irresponsibility from the standpoint of rationalistic ethics. But at the same time, Molière exposes Don Juan primarily from a social standpoint, which takes the image of the main character beyond the abstract-logical nature of the classicists. Molière presents Don Juan as a typical bearer of the vices of his time. On the pages of the comedy, various characters constantly mention that all gentlemen are hypocrites, libertines and deceivers. So, Sganarelle declares to his master: “Or maybe you think that if you are of a noble family, that if you have a blond, skillfully curled wig, a hat with feathers, a dress embroidered with gold, and fiery-colored ribbons ... maybe you think that you are smarter because of this, that everything is allowed to you and no one dares to tell you the truth? Of the same opinion, the peasant Pierrot, driving Don Giovanni away from Charlotte: “Damn it! Since you are a master, then you can pester our women under our noses? No, go ahead and stick to yours."
It should be noted that Moliere also shows examples of high honor from an aristocratic environment. One of them is Don Juan's father, Don Luis. The nobleman remains faithful to the glory of his ancestors, opposes the indecent behavior of his son. He is ready, without waiting for heavenly punishment, to punish his son himself and put an end to his debauchery. There is no traditional reasoner in comedy, but it is Don Luis who is called upon to play his part. The speech addressed to the son is an appeal to the hall: “How low you have fallen! Don't you blush because you are so little worthy of your origin? Have you, tell me, any reason to be proud of him? What have you done to justify the title of nobleman? Or do you think that a name and a coat of arms are enough and that noble blood in itself already exalts us, even if we acted vilely? No, no, nobility without virtue is nothing. We participate in the glory of our ancestors only to the extent that we ourselves strive to be like them ... Finally, understand that a nobleman leading a bad life is a monster of nature, that virtue is the first sign of nobility, that I attach much less importance to names, than deeds, and that the son of some housekeeper, if he is an honest man, I put higher than the son of a king, if he lives like you. The words of Don Luis reflected both the views of the playwright himself and the mood of that part of the nobility that was ready to oppose the permissiveness of the representatives of this class and caste in public life.
The anti-noble orientation of the comedy is also enhanced by the way the image of the protagonist is built. When depicting Don Juan, Moliere departs from the aesthetics of classicism and endows negative character a number of positive qualities that contrast with the characteristics given by Sganarelle.
Don Juan cannot be denied wit, courage, generosity. He descends to wooing peasant women, unlike, for example, the commander in the drama of Lope de Vega. But then Molière very accurately, and in this his skill as an artist, debunks every positive quality of his hero. Don Juan is brave when he fights two against three. However, when Don Juan learns that he will have to fight the twelve, he grants the servant the right to die in his place. At the same time, the lowest level of the nobleman's moral character is manifested, declaring: "Happy is the servant who is given to die a glorious death for his master."
Don Juan generously throws a golden beggar. But the scene with the usurer Dimansh, in which he is forced to humiliate himself in front of the creditor, indicates that Don Juan's generosity is a waste, for he throws other people's money.
At the beginning of the action, the viewer is attracted by the straightforwardness of Don Juan. He does not want to be hypocritical, honestly declaring to Elvira that he does not love her, that he deliberately left her, his conscience prompted him to do so. But, departing from the aesthetics of classicism, Molière, in the course of the development of the play, deprives Don Giovanni of this positive quality as well. His cynicism towards the woman who loves him is striking. A sincere feeling does not evoke a response in his soul. Leaving Doña Elvira, Don Juan reveals all the callousness of his nature:
Don Juan. But you know, I again felt something in her, in this unusual form of her I found a special charm: negligence in dress, languid look, tears - all this awakened in me the remnants of an extinguished fire.
Sganarelle. In other words, her speeches had no effect on you at all.
Don Juan. Dine, live!
Moliere pays special attention to hypocrisy. It is used not only to achieve a career by the courtiers, but in relationships between close people. This is evidenced by the dialogue between Don Juan and his father. Hypocrisy is a means to achieve your own selfish goals. Don Juan comes to the conclusion that hypocrisy is convenient and even profitable. And he confesses this to his servant. Moliere puts a hymn to hypocrisy into the mouth of Don Juan: “Today they are no longer ashamed of this: hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues. The role of a man of good rules is the best of all roles that one can play. In our time, hypocrisy has enormous advantages. Thanks to this art, deceit is always respected, even if it is revealed, still no one will dare to say a single word against it. All other human vices are subject to criticism, everyone is free to openly attack them, but hypocrisy is a vice that enjoys special benefits, it shuts everyone up with its own hand and calmly enjoys complete impunity ... "
Don Juan is an image with which the anti-religious theme of the comedy is also connected. Molière makes his negative hero also a freethinker. Don Juan declares that he does not believe in God or in the black monk, but believes that twice two makes four.
At first glance, it may seem that Molière, in making the negative hero a freethinker, himself rejected freethinking. However, in order to understand the image of Don Juan, it should be remembered that in France of the 17th century there were two types of freethinking - aristocratic and genuine. For the aristocracy, religion was a bridle that prevented them from leading a dissolute lifestyle. But the freethinking of the aristocracy was imaginary, since religion was used by it for its own interests. Genuine free-thinking found expression in the writings of Descartes, Gassendi and other philosophers. It is this kind of free-thinking that permeates the entire comedy of Molière.
In the image of Don Juan, Molière ridicules supporters of aristocratic free-thinking. In the mouth of a comic character, the servant of Sganarelle, he puts the speech of the defender of religion. But the way Sganarelle pronounces it, testifies to the intentions of the playwright. Sganarelle wants to prove that there is a God, he directs the affairs of man, but all his arguments prove the opposite: “Faith is good and dogmas are good! It turns out that your religion is arithmetic? What kind of absurd thoughts appear, to tell the truth, in the minds of people ... I, sir, thank God, did not study like you, and no one can boast that he taught me anything, but I, with my mind, with my tiny common sense I understand everything better than any scribes, and I understand perfectly well that this world that we see could not grow like a mushroom overnight. Who, let me ask you, created these trees, these rocks, this earth and this sky above us? Take, for example, at least you: did you come into the world by yourself, didn’t it have to be for this that your mother became pregnant by your father? Can you look at all the intricate things that make up the machine of the human body and not marvel at how it all fits together? Nerves, bones, veins, arteries, these very ... lungs, heart, liver and other parts that are here and ... "
The scene with the beggar is also filled with a deep anti-religious meaning. The beggar is pious, he is starving, he gives prayers to God, but nevertheless he is poor, and the good deed descends from the blasphemer Don Juan, who throws him gold out of alleged philanthropy. At the same time, he is not averse to mocking the godly beggar, from whom he demands blasphemy for gold. As D. D. Oblomievsky writes, Don Juan is “a seducer of women, a convinced blasphemer and a hypocrite who imitates religious conversion. Depravity is, of course, the main property of Don Juan, but it does not suppress his other features.
The finale of the play also acquires a wide anti-religious sound. The atheist Don Juan gives his hand to the statue and perishes. The statue plays the role of the highest retribution, embodied in this image. Molière retains exactly the ending that was in Tirso de Molina's play. But if, after the comedy of the Spanish playwright, the audience left the theater shocked by horror, then the end of Molière's comedy was accompanied by laughter. The fact is that behind the scene of the punishment of the sinner, Sganarelle immediately appeared, who caused laughter with his antics and comic remarks. Laughter removed all fear of God's punishment. In this, Moliere inherited the traditions of both ancient comedy and Renaissance comedy and literature in general.
The play caused a huge scandal. After the fifteenth performance, it was banned. Comedy returned to the French stage only after 176 years. Molière was reproached for the fact that his views completely coincided with those of Don Juan. The theater connoisseur Rochemont declared the comedy a "devilish play", devoting many pejorative lines to its analysis in "Remarks on Molière's comedy entitled The Stone Guest" (1665).
Tasks for independent work
1. Get acquainted with the methodological literature for the teacher: in which class is it proposed to study the work of Molière?
2. Make a summary plan on the topic "Studying Molière's work at school."
Creative work on the topic
1. Develop a lesson plan on the topic "Mr. Jourdain and his world."
2. Write an essay on the topic: "The Misanthrope" by Moliere and "Woe from Wit" by Griboedov (similarity and difference between the characters).
Colloquium question
The comedic work of Molière.
26 Poetics of Molière's "high comedy" ("Tartuffe", "Don Giovanni").
In order to replenish the repertoire of his troupe, Moliere begins to write plays in which:
- synthesizes the traditions of crude folk farces
- shows the influence of Italian comedy
- all this is refracted through the prism of his French mind and rationalism
Moliere is a born comedian, all the plays that came out from under his pen belong to the comedy genre:
· comedy entertainment
· sitcoms
comedies of manners
comedy-ballets
· "high" - that is, classic - comedies.
By presenting one of his early comedies at the court of Louis XIV, he conquered one of his most devoted admirers, the king, and under the patronage of the sovereign Molière, with his highly professional troupe, opened his own theater in Paris in 1658. The plays “Funny cockerels” (1659), “A lesson for wives” (1662) brought him nationwide fame and many enemies who recognized themselves in the satirical images of his comedies. And even the influence of the king did not save Molière from the prohibition of his best plays, created in the sixties: twice banned for the public theater "Tartuffe", removed from the repertoire of "Don Juan". The fact is that in the work of Molière, comedy has ceased to be a genre designed only to make the public laugh; molière for the first time brought ideological content and social sharpness to comedy.
Features of Molière's "high comedy"
According to the classical hierarchy of genres, comedy - low genre, because it depicts reality in its ordinary, real form.
For Molière, comedy lies entirely within real, most often bourgeois, world.
His heroes have recognizable characters and common names in life; the plot revolves around family, love problems; Molière's private life is based on property, and yet in their best comedies the playwright reflects everyday life from the standpoint of a high humanistic ideal, thus his comedy acquires an ideal beginning, in other words, becomes cleansing, educative, classic comedy.
Molière's friend Nicolas Boileau, the legislator of classic poetics, in the "Poetic Art" puts his work on the highest level, next to the ancient authors - Menander and Plautus - precisely thanks to moral pathos Moliere's creations.
Molière himself reflected on his pioneering comedy in two plays written in defense of the School for Wives, Critique of the School for Wives and Impromptu of Versailles (1663). Through the lips of the hero of the first play, Chevalier Durant, Molière expresses his credo as a comedian:
I find it much easier to talk about high feelings, to fight fortune in verse, to blame fate, to curse the gods, than to look closer at the ridiculous features in a person and show on the stage the vices of society in such a way that it is entertaining ... When you portray ordinary people, here it is necessary to write from nature. Portraits should be similar, and if people of your time are not recognized in them, then you have not reached your goal ... Making decent people laugh is not an easy task ...
Molière is thus elevates comedy to the level of tragedy, says that the task of a comedian is more difficult than that of a writer of tragedies.
An essential feature of high comedy was tragic element, most clearly manifested in The Misanthrope, which is sometimes called a tragicomedy and even a tragedy.
Molière's comedies touch wide circle problems modern life:
- father-child relationship
- upbringing
- marriage and family
- the moral state of society (hypocrisy, greed, vanity, etc.)
- class, religion, culture, science (medicine, philosophy), etc.
Molière puts forward to the fore not entertaining, but educational and satirical tasks. His comedies are characterized by sharp, scourging satire, intransigence with social evil and, at the same time, sparkling healthy humor and cheerfulness.
Features of the characters in Molière
Main featureMoliere's characters - independence, activity, the ability to arrange their happiness and their destiny in the fight against the old and obsolete. Each of them has his own beliefs, his own system of views, which he defends before his opponent; opponent piece is required for classic comedy, because the action in it develops in the context of disputes and discussions.
Another feature of Moliere's characters is their ambiguity. Many of them have not one, but several qualities (Don Juan), or in the course of action there is a complication or change in their characters (Orgon in Tartuffe, Georges Dandin).
All negative characters have one thing in common - breach of measure. Measure is the main principle of classical aesthetics. In the comedies of Molière, it is identical to common sense and naturalness (and hence morality). Their carriers often turn out to be representatives of the people (a maid in Tartuffe, a plebeian wife of Jourdain in the Philistine in the nobility). Showing the imperfection of people, Molière realizes the main principle of the comedy genre- through laughter to harmonize the world and human relations.
"Tartuffe"
Brief historical background
An example of "high comedy" can serve as "Tartuffe". The struggle for the production of Tartuffe went on from 1664 to 1669; counting on the resolution of the comedy, Moliere reworked it three times, but could not soften his opponents. The opponents of Tartuffe were powerful people - members of the Society of the Holy Gifts, a kind of secular branch of the Jesuit order, which acted as an unspoken morality police, planted church morality and the spirit of asceticism, hypocritically proclaiming that it was fighting heretics, enemies of the church and the monarchy. Therefore, although the king liked the play, first presented at a court festival in 1664, Louis could not go against the churchmen who convinced him that the play was attacking not hypocrisy, but religiosity in general, for the time being. Only when the king temporarily quarreled with the Jesuits and a period of relative tolerance set in in his religious policy, Tartuffe was finally staged in its current, third edition, edition. This comedy was the hardest for Moliere and brought him the greatest success in his lifetime.
"Tartuffe" is the first comedy by Moliere, in which certain features of realism. In general, it, like his early plays, obeys the key rules and compositional techniques of the classical work; however, Moliere often departs from them (for example, in Tartuffe the rule of the unity of time is not fully observed - the plot includes a background story about the acquaintance of Orgon and the saint).
What is it all about
"Tartuffe" in one of the dialects of southern France means "swindler", "deceiver". So, already by the name of the play, Molière defines the character of the protagonist, who walks in a secular dress and is a very recognizable portrait of a member of the “cabal of saints”. Tartuffe, pretending to be a righteous man, enters the house of the wealthy bourgeois Orgon and completely subjugates the owner, who transfers his property to Tartuffe. The nature of Tartuffe is obvious to all Orgon's household - the hypocrite only manages to deceive the owner and his mother, Madame Pernel. Orgon breaks with everyone who dares to tell him the truth about Tartuffe, and even expels his son from home. To prove his devotion to Tartuffe, he decides to intermarry with him, to give him his daughter Mariana as his wife. To prevent this marriage, Mariana's stepmother, Orgon's second wife, Elmira, whom Tartuffe has been secretly courting for a long time, undertakes to expose him in front of her husband, and in a farcical scene, when Orgon is hiding under the table, Elmira provokes Tartuffe to immodest proposals, forcing him to make sure of his shamelessness and betrayal. But, having driven him out of the house, Orgon endangers his own well-being - Tartuffe claims the rights to his property, a bailiff comes to Orgon with an eviction order, besides, Tartuffe blackmails Orgon with someone else's secret carelessly entrusted to him, and only the intervention of the wise king, giving the order to arrest a well-known rogue, on whose account a whole list of "shameless deeds", saves the house of Orgon from collapse and provides a happy ending to the comedy.
Character Features
Characters in classic comedy express, as a rule, one characteristic.
- Tartuffein Molière embodies the universal human vice of hypocrisy, hiding behind religious hypocrisy, and in this sense its character is clearly indicated from the very beginning, does not develop throughout the action, but only reveals itself more deeply with each scene in which Tartuffe participates. Wearing a mask- property of the soul of Tartuffe. Hypocrisy is not his only vice, but it is brought to the fore, and others negative traits this property is enhanced and emphasized. Molière succeeded in synthesizing a real concentrate of hypocrisy, heavily condensed almost to the absolute. In reality, this would be impossible. The topical features in the image, associated with the denunciation of the activities of the Society of the Holy Gifts, have long faded into the background, but it is important to note them from the point of view of the poetics of classicism. It turns out unexpected distribution of text by acts: completely absent from the stage in Acts I and II, Tartuffe dominates only in Act III, his role is noticeably reduced in Act IV and almost disappears in Act V. However, the image of Tartuffe does not lose its power. It is revealed through the ideas of the character, his actions, the perception of other characters, the image of the catastrophic consequences of hypocrisy.
- Also many other characters are unilinear comedies: familiar roles young lovers represent images Mariana and her fiancé Valera, lively maid — image of Dorina; reasoner, that is, a character who “pronounces” for the viewer the moral lesson of what is happening, - Elmira's brother, Cleanthe.
- However, in every play by Molière there is the role he played himself, and the character of this character is always the most vital, dramatic, the most ambiguous in the play. In "Tartuffe" Moliere played Orgon.
orgone- in practical terms, an adult who succeeds in business, the father of the family - at the same time embodies spiritual lack of self-sufficiency usually characteristic of children. This is the type of person who needs a leader. Whoever turns out to be this leader, people like Orgon are imbued with boundless gratitude for him and trust their idol more than their closest ones. Orgon lacks his own inner content, which he tries to compensate for by faith in the goodness and infallibility of Tartuffe. Orgon is spiritually dependent, he does not know himself, is easily suggestible and becomes a victim of self-blindness. Without gullible orgones, there are no tartuffe deceivers.. In Orgon, Moliere creates a special type of comic character, which is characterized by the truth of his personal feelings with their objective falsity, and his torments are perceived by the viewer as an expression of moral retribution, the triumph of a positive principle.
Form and composition
By shape"Tartuffe" strictly adheres to the classic rule of three unities: the action takes one day and takes place entirely in the house of Orgon, the only deviation from the unity of action is the line of love misunderstandings between Valera and Mariana. The comedy is written, as always with Moliere, in simple, clear and natural language.
Compositioncomedy is very peculiar and unexpected: the main character Tartuffe appears only in act III. The first two acts is a dispute about Tartuffe. The head of the family, where Tartuffe rubbed himself, Orgon and his mother, Mrs. Pernel, consider Tartuffe a holy person, their trust in the hypocrite is unlimited. The religious enthusiasm that Tartuffe aroused in them makes them blind and ridiculous. At the other extreme are Orgon's son Damis, daughter Marie with her lover Valera, Orgon's wife Elmira, and other heroes. Among all these characters who hate Tartuffe, the maid Dorina stands out in particular. In Molière, in many comedies, people from the people are smarter, more talented, more resourceful than the energy of their masters. For Orgon Tartuffe is the height of all perfection, for Dorina it is "the beggar that came here thin and barefoot", and now "thinks of himself as a ruler."
III and IV acts are built very similarly: finally appeared Tartuffe twice falls into the "mousetrap", his essence becomes obvious. This holy man has decided to seduce Orgon's wife Elmyra and is acting completely shamelessly.
For the first time, his frank confessions to Elmira are heard by the son of Orgon Damis. But Orgon does not believe his revelations, he not only does not expel Tartuffe, but, on the contrary, gives him his house. It took the entire scene to be repeated specifically for Orgon to make him see clearly. To expose the hypocrite, Molière resorts to traditional farcical scene“the husband under the table”, when Orgon sees with his own eyes Tartuffe's courtship of Elmira and hears his words with his own ears. Now Orgon understood the truth. But unexpectedly, Madame Pernel objected to him, who could not believe in the crime of Tartuffe. No matter how angry Orgon is with her, nothing can convince her until Tartuffe expels the whole family from the house now belonging to him and brings an officer to arrest Orgon as a traitor to the king (Orgon entrusted Tartuffe with the secret documents of the Fronde participants). So Molière emphasizes special danger of hypocrisy: it is difficult to believe in the baseness and immorality of a hypocrite until you directly encounter his criminal activity, you do not see his face without a pious mask.
Act V in which Tartuffe, having thrown off his mask, threatens Orgon and his family with the greatest troubles, acquires tragic features, a comedy develops into a tragicomedy. The basis of the tragicomic in Tartuffe is the insight of Orgon. As long as he blindly believed Tartuffe, he caused only laughter and condemnation. But finally Orgon realized his mistake, repented of it. And now he begins to evoke pity and compassion as a person who has become a victim of a villain. The drama of the situation is enhanced by the fact that the whole family was on the street with Orgon. And it is especially dramatic that there is nowhere to expect salvation: none of the heroes of the work can overcome Tartuffe.
But Molière, obeying the laws of the genre, ends the comedy with a happy denouement: it turns out that the officer brought by Tartuffe to arrest Orgon has a royal order to arrest Tartuffe himself. The king had been following this swindler for a long time, and as soon as Tartuffe's activities became dangerous, a decree was immediately sent for his arrest. However, the end of Tartuffe is supposedly happy denouement. Tartuffe is not a specific person, but a generalized image, a literary type, behind him are thousands of hypocrites. The king, on the contrary, is not a type, but the only person in the state. It is impossible to imagine that He could know about all the Tartuffes. Thus, the tragicomic shade of the work is not removed by its happy ending.
Comedies "Don Juan" and "Misanthrope"
During the period when Tartuffe was banned, Moliere created two more masterpieces in the genre of "high comedy": in 1665 Don Giovanni was staged, and in 1666 - The Misanthrope.
"Don Juan"
Comedy plot was borrowed from an Italian script based on Tirso de Molina's comedy The Mischievous Man of Seville. The performance of the Italians went on throughout the season and did not cause any particular complaints. The production of Molière immediately raised a wave of attacks and abuse. The struggle between the church and the poet took on a very sharp character.
The image of Don Juan
In the image of Don Juan, Molière branded the guy he hates a dissolute and cynical aristocrat, a man who not only commits his atrocities with impunity, but also flaunts the fact that, due to his noble origin, he has the right not to reckon with the laws of morality, which are mandatory only for people of a simple rank. Such views reigned at the court, where fidelity and marital honor were regarded as a petty-bourgeois prejudice, and where the king himself set a similar tone, changing his permanent and temporary favorites with ease, the Moliere hero.
But what seemed to aristocrats a harmless change of pleasures, a kind of decoration of an idle existence, Moliere saw from the human and dramatic side. Standing on the positions of humanism and citizenship, the playwright showed in the image of Don Juan not only a frivolous conqueror of women's hearts, but also a cynical and cruel heir to feudal rights, ruthlessly, in the name of a momentary whim, ruining the life and honor of the young women who trusted him. Desecration of a person, trampling on the dignity of women, mockery of their pure and trusting souls - all this was shown in comedy as a result of the vicious passions of an aristocrat that are not curbed in any way in society.
Anticipating Figaro's caustic attacks, Don Juan's servant, Sganarelle, says to his master: “... maybe you think that if you are of a noble family, that if you have a blond, skillfully curled wig, a hat with feathers, a dress embroidered with gold, and fiery-colored ribbons, maybe you think that you are smarter because of this, that everything is allowed to you and no one can tell you the truth? Learn from me, from your servant, that sooner or later... a bad life will lead to a bad death...” These words are clearly audible notes of social protest.
But, giving his hero such a definite characterization, Molière does not deprive him of those personal, subjective qualities, using which Don Juan deceived everyone who had to deal with him, and especially women. Remaining a heartless man, he was subject to ardent, momentary passions, possessed resourcefulness and wit, and even a peculiar charm.
The adventures of Don Juan, no matter how sincere impulses of the heart they are justified, brought the greatest harm to the surrounding people. Listening only to the voice of his passions, Don Juan completely drowned out his conscience; he cynically drove away his mistresses, who were disgusted with him, and impudently recommended to his aged parent to go to the next world as soon as possible, and not to bother him with tedious lectures. Molière saw very well that sensual impulses, not restrained by the bridle of public morality, bring the greatest harm to society.
The depth of Don Juan's characterization was that in the image of a modern aristocrat, seized with an irrepressible thirst for pleasure, Molière showed those extreme limits to which the vitality of the Renaissance hero reached. Once progressive aspirations directed against the ascetic mortification of the flesh, in the new historical conditions, no longer restrained by any barriers of public morality and humanistic ideals, degenerated into predatory individualism, into an open and cynical manifestation of egoistic sensuality. But at the same time, Moliere endowed his hero with bold free-thinking ideas that objectively contributed to the destruction of religious views and the spread of materialistic views of the world in society.
In a conversation with Sganarelle, Don Juan confesses that he does not believe in heaven or hell, or in burning, or in the afterlife, and when the puzzled servant asks him: “What do you believe in?” Don Juan calmly replies: "I believe, Sganarelle, that twice two is four, and twice four is eight."
In this arithmetic, in addition to the cynical recognition of profit as the highest moral truth, there was also wisdom of its own. The freethinker Don Juan did not believe in an all-consuming idea, not in the holy spirit, but only into the reality of human existence limited by earthly existence.
Image of Sganarelle
Contrasting Don Juan with his servant Sganarelle, Moliere outlined the paths that would later lead to bold denunciations of Figaro. The encounter between Don Juan and Sganarelle revealed conflict between aristocratic willfulness and bourgeois sanity, but Moliere was not limited to the external opposition of these two social types, criticism of the aristocracy. He also disclosed contradictions lurking in bourgeois moralization. The social consciousness of the bourgeoisie was already sufficiently developed to make it possible to see the vicious egoistic side of the sensuality of the Renaissance, but the “third estate” had not yet entered its heroic period, and its ideals had not yet begun to seem as absolute as they seem to enlighteners. Therefore, Molière had the opportunity to show not only the strong, but also the weak side of the worldview and character of Sganarelle, to show the petty-bourgeois limitations of this type.
When Sganarelle, blaming Don Juan, says that he "does not believe in heaven, nor in saints, nor in God, nor in the devil," what he “lives like vile cattle, like an epicurean pig, like a real Sardanapalus, who does not want to listen to Christian teachings and considers everything that we believe to be nonsense”, then in this philippic, one can clearly hear the irony of Moliere about the limitations of the virtuous Sganarelle. In response to the philosophical arithmetic of Don Juan, Sganarelle develops a proof of the existence of God from the fact of the reasonableness of the universe. Demonstrating the perfection of divine creations on himself, Sganarelle is so carried away by gestures, turns, jumps and jumps that in the end he falls down and gives reason to the atheist to say: "Here is your reasoning and broke his nose." And in this scene, Molière stands clearly behind Don Juan. Praising the rationality of the universe, Sganarelle proved only one thing - his own stupidity. Sganarelle makes noble speeches, but in reality he is naive and openly cowardly. And, of course, the Church Fathers were right when they resented Moliere for presenting this comic servant as the only defender of Christianity. But the author of "Tartuffe" knew that religious morality was so elastic that it could be preached by any person, since it did not require a clear conscience, but only orthodox speeches. Personal virtues did not matter here: a person can commit the most evil deeds, and no one will consider him a sinner if he covers his vicious physiognomy with a thin mask of ostentatious piety.
Tartuffe was banned, but the passionate desire to denounce hypocrisy burned the heart of the poet. He could not contain his anger against the Jesuits and hypocrites and forced Don Juan, this outright sinner, to speak sarcastically about the hypocritical rascals: “Let their intrigues be known, let everyone know who they are, all the same, they do not lose confidence: if they bow their heads once or twice, sigh in contrition or roll their eyes, and now everything is settled ...” And here in the words of Don Juan the voice of Molière is heard. Don Juan decides to try it on himself magical power hypocrisy. “Under this fertile canopy I want to hide in order to act in complete serenity,” he says. “I will not give up my sweet habits, but I will hide from the light and have fun on the sly. And if they cover me, I won’t lift a finger on a finger; the whole gang will intercede for me and protect me from anyone. In a word, this is the best way to do whatever you want with impunity.
Indeed, hypocrisy is an excellent defense against attacks. Don Juan is accused of perjury, and he humbly clasped his hands and rolled his eyes to the sky, muttering: “So wants the sky”, “This is the will of the sky”, “I obey the voice of the sky” etc. But Don Juan is not the type to play the cowardly role of a hypocritical righteous man for a long time. The insolent consciousness of his impunity allowed him to act and without a mask. If in life there was no justice against Don Juan, then on the trail Molière could raise his angry voice against the criminal aristocrat, and comedy finale- the thunder and lightning that hit Don Juan was not a traditional stage effect, but figurative expression of retribution, embodied in stage form, a harbinger of a formidable punishment that will fall on the heads of aristocrats.
"Misanthrope" is the least cheerful play by Moliere and probably the best example of high comedy.
The action of the comedy begins with a dispute between Alceste and his friend Philint. Philint preaches a conciliatory philosophy convenient for life. Why take up arms against the way of life when you can't change it anyway? It is much more reasonable to adapt to public opinion and indulge secular tastes. But Alceste hates such curvature of the soul. He says to Philint:
But since you like the vices of our days,
You, damn it, are not one of my people.
Alceste passionately hates the people around him; but this hatred concerns not the very essence of human nature, but those perversions that a false social order brings with it. Anticipating the ideas of the Enlightenment, Molière, in the image of his Misanthrope, depicts clash of "natural man" with "artificial" people, corrupted by bad laws. Alceste leaves the vile world with its cruel and deceitful inhabitants in disgust.
With this hated society, Alceste is connected only by a passionate love for Selimene. Young Célimène is a smart and determined girl, but her consciousness and feelings are completely subordinated to the mores of high society, and therefore she is empty and heartless. After Célimène's high society admirers, offended by her slander, leave her, she agrees to become Alceste's wife. Alceste is infinitely happy, but he sets a condition for his future girlfriend: they must leave the world forever and live in solitude among nature. Célimène refuses such folly, and Alceste returns her word.
Alceste does not imagine happiness in that world where one must live according to the laws of the wolf - his ideological conviction triumphs over insane passion. But Alceste leaves society neither devastated nor defeated. After all, it was not for nothing that he, ridiculing the pompous verses of the Marquis, contrasted them with a charming folk song, cheerful and sincere. Praising the rural muse, the Misanthrope showed himself to be a person who deeply loves and understands his people. But Alceste, like all his contemporaries, did not yet know the paths that lead the protester alone to the camp of popular indignation. Moliere himself did not know these paths, since they had not yet been paved by history.
Alceste from beginning to end of comedy remains a Protestant, but Molière cannot find a great life theme. The process that Alceste conducts with his opponent is not included in the action of the play, it is, as it were, a symbol of the injustice reigning in the world. Alceste has to limit his struggle only to criticism of cutesy verses and reproaches of the windy Célimène. Molière could not yet construct a play with significant social conflict, because such a conflict had not yet been prepared by reality; and yet in life the voices of protest were heard more and more clearly, and Molière not only heard them, but also added his loud and distinct voice to them.
