GOGOL AND MELODRAMA (TO THE PROBLEM SETTINGS)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to indicate a connection between Gogol’s critical remarks on melodrama and his poetics, a problem that has not been studied sufficiently. In the first part of the article, we point two negative characters that Gogol reveals in the melodrama – its alienation from Russian life and presentation of an illusory one. Melodrama serves as a symbol of illusion that does not correspond to real life and deceives people. Shattering the illusory vision mistaken for reality is one of the main tasks of Gogol’s poetics, which requires physical and moral shock as a key device for aesthetic and ethical awakening. However, as we see in the second part of the article, a shock is found in the center of melodrama’s poetics, especially in the context of the 1830s Russian theater and literature that exaggerated such strong emotions as horror and fear. We can suspect that Gogol’s harsh and chronic criticism of melodrama has its roots in the similarity between his poetics of shock and the emotional effect created by melodrama. In the final part, we see Gogol’s transformation of a generally accepted understanding that shock is produced exclusively by the melodramatic extraordinary. According to Gogol, melodrama demonstrates a false understanding and use of shock to create the illusory vision of life on the stage. Gogol’s novelty lies in his redefining the shock as a contrast between the extraordinary and the ordinary (and not as the extraordinary itself). A real shock, Gogol insists, extracted not from the exceptional events in melodrama but from the representation of ordinary life, makes a contrast in ordinary life and shatters the reader’s illusory vision of life.