Polemic about N. Gogol’s comedy “The Government Inspector” in the Serbian press of the 1860s: publications, critics' positions, precedent-texts of articles

For citation: Sartakov E.V. Polemic about N. Gogol’s comedy “The Government Inspector” in the Serbian press of the 1860s: publications, critics' positions, precedent-texts of articles // Mediascope. 2024. 4. Available at:  https://www.mediascope.ru/2886

© Egor V. Sartakov

PhD, Associate Professor at the Chair of History of Russian Journalism and Literature, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Abstract

The article examines the controversy in the Serbian-language press of the middle of the 19th century about N. Gogol’s comedy “The Government Inspector”. The dispute was between the “aesthetic” perception of Gogol’s play and its “real”, or social, content. In the Vila newspaper, the critic Stojan Novaković insisted that only a work that was not created artificially, at the behest of reason, can be recognized as literature, wrote about the “eternal beauty” of art and about aesthetics without doctrinairism. It has been established that the precedent-texts for Novaković’s review were the articles by A. Druzhinin in the “Biblioteka dlja chtenija” and especially by V. Botkin in Nekrasov’s “Sovremennik”, up to the verbatim citation of the latter without reference to the source. On the contrary, in the newspaper Danitsa Novaković, in the spirit of N. Chernyshevsky and N. Dobrolyubov, was objected by an anonymous reviewer who correlated Gogol’s work with his socio-political theories and saw in “The Government Inspector” primarily criticism of social vices. It is concluded that the controversy that broke out in the press between the main literary publications in the Balkans only increased the interest of the audience in staging this play.

Key words: Gogol, “The Government Inspector”, Serbia, Serbian literature, Botkin.

Notes

Anon (1865). Нешто у одбрану појезије и вештине (Одломак из једне критике) [Something in defense of poetry and craftsmanship (excerpt from one criticism)]. Вила. No 24–28. (In Serbian)

Anon (1866) Русски театар [Russian theatre]. Даница. No 18. (In Serbian)

Belinskiy V.G. (1953–1959) Polnoe sobranie sochineniy: V 13 t. Полное собрание сочинений: В 13 т. [Complete works: In 13 volumes]. Moscow: AN SSSR Publ. (In Russian)

Botkin V.P. (1857) Stikhotvoreniya A.A. Feta. St. Petersburg, 1856 Стихотворения А.А. Фета. СПб., 1856 [Poems by A. Fet. St. Petersburg, 1856]. Sovremennik. 1857. No 1. (In Russian)

Chernyshevskiy N.G. Sochineniya i pis'ma N.V. Gogolya [Works and letters by N.Gogol]. Sovremennik. 1857. No 8. (In Russian)

Dobrolyubov N.A. O stepeni uchasti narodnosti v razvitii russkoy literatury [About the degree of participation of the nation in the development of Russian literature]. Sovremennik. 1858.No 2. (In Russian)

Druzhinin A. (1856) Kritika gogolevskogo perioda russkoy literatury i nashi k ney otnosheniya [Criticism of the Gogol period of Russian literature and our relationship to it]. Biblioteka dlya chteniya. No 12. (In Russian)

Gogol’ N.V. (1937–1952) Polnoe sobranie sochineniy: V 14 t. [Complete works: In 14 volumes]. Moscow; Leningrad: AN SSSR Publ. (In Russian)

Istoricheskiy vestnik [Historical Bulletin]. 1896. No 12. (In Russian)

Severnaya pchela. 1836. 1 May. No 98. (In Russian)

Zotov R.M. (1859) Teatral'nye vospominaniya [Theatrical memories]. Dramaticheskiy sbornik. (In Russian)

Глишић М., Миљковић Љ. (1870) Приповетке Николе Васиљевића Гогоља [Tales of Nikolay Gogol]. Српске новине. No 96. (In Serbian)

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