SOURCE: Kantor, Marvin. “Fonvizin and Holberg: A Comparison of The Brigadier and Jean de France.” Canadian American Slavic Studies 7, no. 4 (1973): 475-84.

[In the following essay, Kantor argues that the influence of Danish dramatist Ludvig Holberg's Jean de France on The Brigadier has been much exaggerated by critics. Holberg's play, Kantor maintains, is a satire with one theme, one hero, and one target, while Fonvizin's work has several themes, heroes, and targets, and is distinctly Russian in its situation, language, and concerns.]

Among the foreign authors whose works enjoyed considerable popularity in Russia was the Danish playwright, Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754). A number of his works appeared in the 1759 edition of the journal, The Industrious Bee (Trudoliubivaia pchela), and his plays Don Ranudo de Colibrados (Gordost' i bednost'), Henrich and Pernille (Henrik og Pernille/Genrikh i Pernila), Plutus (Plutus, ili spor bednosti i bogatstva), Jeppe of the Hill (Jeppe paa Bjerget/Prevrashchennyi muzhik), and Artaxerxes (Artaks) were translated soonafter.¹ Furthermore, both Gukovskii and Stender-Petersen have pointed out that Holberg's Jean de France (1722) was known in Russia from German sources. In fact, this comedy appeared first in the 1741 edition of Gottsched's The German Stage (Die Deutsche Schaubühne), and then again in 1750 in Laub's edition of The Danish Stage (Die Dänische Schaubühne), both of which, with the exception of changed names and some minor expurgations, were accurate translations. Jean de France was translated for Gottsched's collection by G. A. Detharding under the title Jean de France or the German Frenchman (Jean de France, oder der deutsche Franzose).

I. P. Elagin, Fonvizin's superior in the empress's Cabinet and head of a circle of writers and translators occupied primarily with reworking foreign plays into which Russian manners were inserted, adapted Holberg's comedy from Detharding's translation. Under a new title, Jean de Mole or the Russian Frenchman (Zhan de Mole, ili Russkii frantsuz),² it was staged during the 1764-1765 season. While working on The Brigadier (Brigadir, 1766-1769), Fonvizin was unquestionably aware of Elagin's adaptation of Jean de France and, perhaps, even of the German translation which preceded it. Yet he composed a comedy which, according to a number of eminent critics, was modeled on a work that had been recently reworked and staged.

Others, in defending the originality of The Brigadier, have disputed the influence of Jean de France upon it. Thus, at the close of the past century, Holberg's influence was asserted by the Russian academician N. S. Tikhonravov,³ and again by the talented literary critic A. N. Veselovskii, who in a study devoted to western influence on Russian literature wrote: “To this long list [of Fonvizin's borrowings from foreign authors] we shall add for our part the fact of influence on The Brigadier (in particular on the depiction of Ivanushka) of Holberg's comedy Jean de France. … There are many points of contact in the content and details of both plays.”⁴ A quarter of a century later, this same assertion was repeated by B. Varneke in his study of the Russian theater: “This play [Jean de France] had a strong influence on Fonvizin, which is seen in the depiction of the character of Ivanushka and the general handling of the play's subject matter (siuzhet)”⁵ Russian critics were not alone in this view. The most ambitious and detailed study of this question was made by the Danish slavist A. Stender-Petersen, who in an extensive article set out to document Holberg's influence on eighteenth-century Russian comedy generally and Fonvizin in particular. The article was introduced with the following remarks: “Fonvizin is inconceivable without Holberg, Holbergian comedy and the Holbergian vis comica. … In the present study, which traces Holberg's effect from Sumarokov to the end of the eighteenth century, it will be shown that Holberg's influence qualitatively was even greater than Molière's in that the most viable comedies of this century go back directly to Holberg, in particular his Jean de France”⁶ Speaking about Fonvizin, Stender-Petersen wrote: “He kept in The Brigadier, Holberg's hero, the fundamental features of his plot, a majority of the characteristic lines and—which is the main point—the master's technique of characterization. …”⁷ And in summation he concluded: “Fonvizin's talent governs the entire second half of the eighteenth century. He is the only big name in Russian comedy of this period and next to him all others pale. In his comedies, above all in The Brigadier, the influence which Holberg exerted on Russian comedy attained its fullest and most brilliant expression; and it was particularly, if not exclusively, Jean de France which served Fonvizin as a model, pattern and source. …”⁸

On the other hand, in a perceptive study of eighteenth-century Russian literature, the gifted Soviet critic G. A. Gukovskii denied allegations of influence on The Brigadier:

… in pre-revolutionary scholarship, attempts were even made to declare Fonvizin an unoriginal writer and imitator. Thus, for example, with some malicious joy, Aleksei Veselovskii exposed Fonvizin's borrowings. … Aleksei Veselovskii tries to prove that The Brigadier was written under the influence of the comedy Jean de France by the remarkable eighteenth-century Danish dramatist Holberg. However, neither the subject matter (siuzhet) nor dramatis personae of Holberg's comedy are similar to Fonvizin's. The similarity is only in the figure of Ivanushka in whose role there is some—very little—borrowing but not direct from the role of Holberg's hero. … It goes without saying that the system of images, the style and artistic manner of this comedy are far removed from Holberg.⁹

With the exception of D. Blagoi, contemporary Soviet literary critics writing either about the theater or Fonvizin himself ignore this question entirely.¹⁰ When Holberg is mentioned, it is only in regard to his fables which Fonvizin translated in 1761. It was also ignored by D. H. Welsh in his study of Russian comedy,¹¹ and by H. B. Segal in his history and anthology of eighteenth-century Russian literature.¹² However, Blagoi, in a monograph devoted to Fonvizin, again casts some doubts in regard to influence:

Later researchers (Tikhonravov, Aleksei Veselovskii) managed also to find for The Brigadier a foreign parallel, a comedy which enjoyed great popularity, Holberg's Jean de France. Actually there are common features, even coincidences with Holberg's comedy in the plot as well as in the elaboration of certain details. … However, despite the opinion of Aleksei Veselovskii and several other researchers, this does not at all attest to the unoriginality of Fonvizin's creation. … In particular the similarity between The Brigadier and Holberg's comedy which later researchers “discovered” and indeed strongly exaggerated, could not have been but completely obvious to Fonvizin's contemporaries. … Yet this did not in any way hinder the brilliant success of The Brigadier¹³

It is obvious from the foregoing that the question of the originality of Fonvizin's play The Brigadier is still an issue among literary critics. Of those who spoke against influence, Gukovskii, unfortunately, offered no corroborative comparative analysis to substantiate his argument, while Blagoi was certainly vague and unconvincing, asking us to consider only the reaction of Fonvizin's contemporaries and the comedy's success. Of those who spoke for influence, Varneke was as unconvincing as Blagoi, but Tikhonravov, Veselovskii and particularly Stender-Petersen established a close relationship between the works in question by relying heavily on extrinsic considerations and causal explanations, and disregarding completely intrinsic analyses of “structure” in the broad sense of the term. Nevertheless, the relationship was flagrantly overstated. And the most unfortunate consequence of this overstatement is that it was accepted uncritically and popularized in a number of non-scholarly works on Russian literature. For example, D. S. Mirsky states: “Fonvizin's principal model, however, was not Molière, but the great Danish playwright Holberg, whom he read in German, and some of whose plays he had translated (sic?).”¹⁴ And, among others, Marc Slonim writes: “The Empress and her son Paul, the heir apparent, listened to his first comedy, The Brigadier, inspired by the Danish playwright, Ludvig Holberg.”¹⁵ I would now like to take up this problem since, it seems to me, it circumscribes the nature of Fonvizin's contribution to Russian comedy and defines the question of his “originality.”

To summarize Holberg's comedy very briefly: After spending several weeks with his servant (Peer-Pierre) in Paris, where he develops an insane love for everything French and disdain for anything Danish, Jean (Hans Frandsen) returns home to his betrothed (Elsebet) who is in love with another (Antonius). Goaded into utterly fantastic displays of his peculiar fioble by the lovers' disguised servants (Marthe-Madame la Flèche and Espen-d ‘Espang), whose motives, ostensibly, are to unite their masters, Jean makes a complete fool of himself. He loses his fiancèe, is duped into believing that Madame la Flèche is waiting for him in France, and leaves Denmark.

A closer look reveals that we are dealing in essence with two different types of comedy. While Holberg's Jean de France is a comedy of humors (or character), Fonvinzin's The Brigadier is one of manners. In the former type, comic interest is derived principally from the exhibition of individuals whose conduct is governed by a single characteristic of humor. This humor or highly exaggerated trait of character determines their disposition and supplies the motive for their actions. The particular humor satirized is naturally recognizable as a universal, generalized human trait. The latter type is usually very topical and concerns itself with the manners and conventions of an artificial, “elegant” society. It is relatively unique to and reflects the manners and outlook of this specific social group. Here the characters are types rather than individualized personalities, and the satire is directed against the follies and deficiencies of these typical characters. One of the distinguishing characteristics of this type of comedy is its emphasis on illicit love duels (cf. Elizabethan and French comedies of manners).

To a great extent, genre not only dictates the treatment of comic characterization but also determines the structure of the plot. For a comedy of manners, dialogue for the most part replaces action. Fonvizin's comedy is made up almost exclusively of conversations in which declarations of love are confessed; viz., Ivanushka and the Councilor's wife, the Councilor and the Brigadier's wife, the Brigadier and the Councilor's wife, and Dobroliubov and Sophia. The plot in fact consists of this very series of love confessions which in turn form a series of comic scenes. Fonvizin constructs his plot from the entanglements of the negative characters and contrasts them with the virtuous love of Sophia and Dobroliubov. However, because of his desire to be witty and excite laughter, our playwright chose to ignore the plot's incoherence. Although symmetrically developed throughout the comedy, which, as a consequence, is highly amusing, the plot, nevertheless, is artificial and fails to unite the acts. As a result, the play disintegrates into a series of separate scenes featuring different sets of characters. In keeping with his role of preacher and moralizer, Fonvizin placed more importance on the edification of the audience than on the play's structure.

By writing a comedy consisting almost entirely of dialogue, Fonvizin violated a principle of dramatic composition which Holberg firmly upheld. The latter believed that comedies mostly of dialogue, as, for example, those of Destouches, whose plays he disliked and criticized repeatedly, lacked sufficient action to illustrate and establish dramatic characters. Holberg's plot stresses action, whose primary if not sole function is to exhibit various aspects of an individual's servitude to a single rampant characteristic. His plot, therefore, is resolved by an elaborate intrigue (something entirely absent from Fonvizin's comedy) in which conventional servants à la commedia dell'arte devise a series of tricks, ostensibly to bring the virtuous lovers together, but which create situations displaying the folly of the “hero” to the fullest extent. Consequently the “love duel” yields its place to a game of disguise. In Jean de France, a servant (Marthe) disguised as a distinguished French lady (Madame la Flèche), and another (Espen), disguised as her servant (d'Espang), dupe Jean through his own idiosyncrasy. In fact the plot structure of Jean de France follows faithfully the formula of commedia dell'arte. Apparently Holberg preferred the simple dramatic plan of commedia dell'arte: he ignored the modifications of Molière who had dispensed with servant intrigues to resolve the plot. Holberg's dramatic structure provided action and focused attention on his characters.

One of the results of making action an organic part of character portrayal is that the comedy rapidly assumes certain aspects of a farce, i.e., exaggerated and fantastic action, coarse wit and a type of horseplay which is unrelated to the play's dramatic purpose and meant primarily to excite laughter. There are indeed many such elements in Jean de France. For example, the servant (Espen), considering northern Jutland a part of the Holy Roman Empire, passes himself off as “more Roman than Danish” (III, 2); there is the comic confusion by a servant of the French words mère (mother) with mare, and maîtresse (mistress) with mattress (II, 4); or the name of the French town Roven is turned into the coarse Danish word for “rump” (Roven, I, 1), etc. Furthermore, the disguised servants are able to make a complete fool of Jean, obviously to convince the amorosa's father of his unsuitability. In the belief that he is following the latest Parisian fashions, Jeans puts his coat on backwards, smears snuff around his mouth, has his scarf sticking out in the rear, does not cover his mouth when yawning, and so forth. These elements of farce are absent from The Brigadier, and their absence creates an entirely dissimilar tone. In contrast to the informal, playful, and ribald tone of Jean de France, that of The Brigadier is more formal, serious and decorous. While both playwrights make wide use of puns, Holberg's are often more racy and frequently depend on sexual allusions.

There is also a marked difference in the use of French in the comedies. Ivanushka and the Councilor's wife infrequently resort to French, using a phrase or two as mere speech adornments. While there is never any sustained French dialogue in The Brigadier, the French that is spoken is grammatically correct. Jean, on the other hand, is constantly trying to speak French, and there is a great deal of sustained dialogue. However, the French spoken in Jean de France is distorted and often grammatically incorrect (Madame la Flèche: “A cette heure il doit venir war das nicht um drey Uhr, das er promised zu kommen?” IV, 2), with the result that the language itself becomes a caricature.

It is true that both works, to varying degrees, deal with the social phenomenon of Gallomania. Holberg was the first to introduce this theme to the Danish stage. The Danish critic, Olaf Skavlan has suggested that the figure of Jean is modeled on Monsieur de Paris from Wycherley's The Gentleman Dancing Master or Monsieur de Paris. More likely, however, Jean's image was perceived more closely to home in Hans Willumsen Lauremberg's Four Satires (Fire Satirer, 1652).¹⁶ Lauremberg's second and third satires, On Most-Fashionable Clothes (Om Alamodisk Klaededragt) and On Most-Fashionable Speech and Titles (Om Alamodisk Sprog og Titler), form the composite out of which the figure of Jean emerges; i.e., a Frenchified fop who on his return home, after spending several weeks in Paris, indiscriminately showers everyone with vulgar, pidgin French and is insanely eager to ape the latest fashions in manner and dress. As a result of adapting the most superficial externalities of French “culture,” his broken speech consists for the most part of strings of oaths, while his manners and dress are absurdly vulgar (cf. III, 1; IV, 5).

On the Russian stage Gallomania was first satirized in Sumarokov's comedies, The Monsters (Chudovishchi) and An Empty Quarrel (Pustaia ssora), both written in 1750.¹⁷ In a way the figure of Diulizh, Sumarokov's hero, provided a pattern for caricaturing the affected manners and vocabulary of the petit-maître. This type would subsequently mince his way through a series of comedies. During the 1764-1765 season, apart from Elagin's Jean de Mole, two other comedies satirizing Gallomania were staged—Lukin's The Trinket-Vendor (Shchepetil'nik), and Karin's Russians Returning from France (Rossiiane, vozvrativshiesia iz Frantsii). By 1765, Gallomania became a favorite target in Russian comedies and journals. Consequently, if Fonvizin were looking for a model for his satire, he had numerous patterns to choose from. Be that as it may, how does the treatment of this theme compare in the comedies?

Gallomania is central to Jean de France, but incidental to The Brigadier. It is the only theme in Holberg's comedy, while in Fonvizin's work it has to compete with a number of equally important themes including extortion, chicanery, hypocrisy and martinetism. In Jean de France, Gallomania motivates the hero's every thought and action, with manifestations of it becoming more pronounced and intensified as the drama unfolds. As a result, the comedy's action is entirely subordinated to this theme and is designed for one purpose only: to drive the central character (Jean) out of his humor and thus make his folly totally ridiculous. Since Jean's mania races along a single track—away from Danes and Denmark—in the end he decides to sever all ties with his native land, and leaves for Paris. On the other hand, the circumstances in which Fonvizin chose to place his characters limited the possibilities of creating and developing masterful images of a Gallomaniac or, for that matter, a martinet or a hypocrite, as the possibilities of treating extensively any concomitant themes. It is not surprising, therefore, that the play lacks not only action but a central figure and a unifying theme. In its place we find a narrow but fairly balanced and proportionate treatment of all the personified vices and themes. As such, Gallomania is represented by Ivanushka, the ignorant and pampered son of the Brigadier, and his female counterpart and paramour, the equally ignorant and lascivious Councilor's wife. Compared with Jean, their displays of this vice are highly circumscribed and, more importantly, conveyed only in the form of superficial verbal obeisance to it. Since Gallomania is only one of the themes of The Brigadier, it receives neither sustained treatment nor emphasis and is conspicuously less significant and pronounced than in Jean de France. It is almost entirely absent from the final scenes (cf. V, 3, 4, 5) where, if anywhere, its orchestration, were Gallomania central, should have ended in a grand finale. Instead, the theme of hypocrisy is picked up again: The relation between Ivanushka and the Councilor's wife is discovered and severed, and both meekly revert to their former situation.

Holberg's comedy closely reflects Ben Jonson's definition of a “humour:”

As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers
In their confluxions, all to run one way.

Like Jonson's figures, Holberg's hero runs the risk of losing all human semblance in the grip of his peculiar obsession. Though Holberg is certainly like Molière in exhibiting a character dominated by a single trait (Tartuffe, Harpagon), he, like Jonson, allows it to assume the force of monomania. His characterization is stretched to such an extent that there is a glint of madness in his hero (cf. III, 1; IV, 4, 5).

Fonvizin's characters are, as it were, variants of one social classification. He shows separate vices, not individuals: martinetism (the Brigadier), extortion, chicanery and hypocrisy (the Councilor), and Gallomania (Ivanushka and the Councilor's wife). These vices are personified in verbal masks—the Brigadier's military jargon, the Councilor's chancery idiom and Slavicisms, and Ivanushka's and the Councilor's wife Frenchified phraseology. Here the probable loss of human semblance is due to corporate generalizations. Thus, vices in all their variety replace the individuals. Where Holberg strove to reform manners, Fonvizin did the same for morals. Holberg was interested in promoting social amenity rather than fundamental character reform, Fonvizin was primarily interested in accelerating fundamental reform. For example, such deficiencies as represented by the principal characters' hostile attitude toward education (I, 1), or as represented by the Councilor who attempts to seduce the Brigadier's wife with the aid of biblical allusions (II, 3), or the hardships and suffering of army wives at the hands of their cruel husbands (IV, 1), or the pernicious influence of illiterate foreign tutors (V, 2), and so on. In this, and all his plays, Fonvizin attempted to depict in a variety of ways the noxious influence of a rotten environment upon the individual, his family, and his society.

Of all the characters in Fonvizin's play, the Brigadier's wife is most sharply delineated. A simple, uneducated woman, given forcibly in marriage to a man she had never seen, much less loved, she finds herself tyrannized, suffering the trials and meager existence of an army wife, struggling with basic need and forced to economize and count kopecks. A result of this interaction between the tyrant and the tyrannized is that she, too, becomes miserly, calculating and petty, and all carried to the extreme. Always on guard against being cheated out of half a kopeck, the center of her universe becomes her housekeeping books and, in her son's words, “she'd gladly suffer through spotted fever for a ruble” (I, 3). Except for her interests, limited to her storehouse and livestock, all else remains remote and incomprehensible. Of graver consequences is her scornful attitude toward education, a “Grammer” costs money regardless of “whether you learn it or not” (I, 1). This attitude is extended to Ivanushka. She is much the opposite of the female protagonists in the comedies of Holberg, who creates domineering females. Here the mother (or matriarch) is often portrayed as a household tyrant. She imposes her will on all matters concerning the organization and conduct of the household, and subordinates the male completely. The father, consequently, is the one who is ruled and forced into submission by his domineering wife. In Jean de France, Magdelone is captivated by the Frenchified airs of her foppish son (Jean) and forces her husband (Frands) to assume the same adoring attitude. It is curious to note that Frands is finally forced into submission by his wife's threat never to sleep with him again (I, 5), whereas the Brigadier rivals his son for the affections of the Councilor's wife.

In the framework of Holberg's comedy there is no room for the treatment of characters who do not goad the hero into ludicrous displays of his mania. Therefore more attention is given to the servants (Marthe and Espen) and their disguised doubles (Madame la Flèche and d'Espang) than to both Magdelone and Frands. They are very pale figures and of secondary importance. In fact, once Magdelone's attitude toward her son is established (I, 5, 6), her dramatic role is fulfilled and she exists, not to reappear. And Frands is simply a foil to his wife and the raisonneur (Jeronimus). However, in Fonvizin's comedy, the Brigadier and his wife are integral parts of the general satire and receive commensurate dramatic treatment with all the other major characters. In the Brigadier's wife Fonvizin satirized an ignorant, miserly woman who paid more attention to her housekeeping books than to her son's education; in the Brigadier he satirized the martinet, a crude, untutored disciplinarian—nurtured on military regulations and the articles of war—who to words and reason prefers fists and sticks.

As part of the nobility, the Brigadier and his wife are morally obliged to educate their son. Incapable of appreciating or understanding the value of a proper education, they follow, foolishly, the dictates of fashion and seek to provide a “fashionable” education, i.e., a French one. The social pressures create a curious disease of the period, one which might be diagnosed as “terminal Gallomania;” viz., a home education (administered infectiously by an illiterate Frenchman), a complementary trip to France (total exposure), and home again (incurably afflicted). Ivanushka suffers from this illness. His image embodies this universal type—one infatuated with everything foreign and contemptuous of everything native—and the attendant vices. Consequently, he is ashamed of being a Russian but consoles himself with the thought that his “spirit belongs to the crown of France” (III, 1). By providing their son with this “fashionable” education, Ivanushka's parents are, ironically, instrumental in exposing him to an equally dangerous infection, namely, freedom of thought, which is a far more formidable threat to their closed, authoritative world. Ivanushka has a slight case of this also. He challenges parental authority by defying his father, and the right of parents to dispose of their childrens' lives. But, Ivanushka remains a fool, ridiculed for indiscriminately accepting all the superficialities and externals of his French semi-education. Despite this, during the last act Ivanushka undergoes an abrupt and unmotivated change, sharply at variance with the personality previously portrayed: “A young man is like wax. If, malheuresement, I had fallen into the hands of a Russian who loved his people, perhaps I wouldn't be like I am” (V, 2). Even if we hear the author's voice in this thought, it is still Ivanushka who utters it. It is totally inconceivable that Holberg would impart such a thought through Jean. Indeed, Jean is a palpable bundle of Frenchified affections the embodiment of which is animated, much in the manner of a puppet, solely for purposes of spirited amusement. Not once is this “puppet” marred by a disharmonious thought, action, even gesture. His antics increase in scope and intensity until finally he is reduced to a caricature. He is totally grotesque, a consummate image of his peculiar folly.

With the possible exception of the two conventional young lovers (Sophia and Dobroliubov and Elsebet and Antonius) whose mutual love lacks real emotion and is hardly more than a pretext for involving other characters in a series of comic scenes, there is in essence no similarity between the few counterparts in the respective casts of character. The raisonneur or exponent of common sense is a figure whose principal function is to express the author's own ideas on a variety of subjects. This figure is very weakly developed in The Brigadier In a way the role of raisonneur is taken by Dobroliubov who is clearly of secondary importance in the play. If anything, he serves more as a contrast to the negative, immoral male figures than as an exponent of common sense or the bearer of the author's ideas. For example, compare Dobroliubov to Starodum and Pravdin in The Minor (Nedorosl'), or Seum and Nel'stetsov in The Selection of a Tutor (Vybor guvernëra), where the role of raisonneur is of primary importance. Jeronimus, however, is Holberg's spokesman in Jean de France, and is, as such, an important figure in the play. The fathers of the brides-to-be (Jeronimus and the Councilor) are diametrically opposed in almost every sense. Indicative of this is the fact that Jeronimus is the raisonneur, while the Councilor is satirized for his corruption and hypocrisy, and is shown as the product of abysmal ignorance.

Finally, the authors in question employ different methods in characterizing their comic figures. Holberg postpones the hero's entrance until he has been vividly described. The description is usually given by a servant who does not know what to make of the hero. After his entrance, the hero simply copies his portrait. And he still amazes us by the extraordinary manner in which he lives up to it. Thus, the image develops from static description to dynamic action in which it is re-enforced. In this way, Holberg is able to focus and hold the audience's attention on a single comic hero. Fonvizin, on the other hand, relies on dialogue or, more precisely, on dialogues between negative characters in which each discloses his particular vice. Comic effects are often achieved in these dialogues by ridiculous failures to understand. Hence, the Brigadier cannot understand the Frenchified twaddle of Ivanushka, the Brigadier's wife does not understand the Councilor's advances because his language is a stilted admixture of Slavicisms and officialiese, and the Councilor's wife pretends not to understand the Brigadier's amorous intention because it is couched in terms of a military assault. He does not attempt to characterize through action, a method Holberg exploits to the utmost.

Summing up briefly, it can be said that Holberg's comedy is what might be termed a “monolithic” satire, i.e., a satire with one theme, one hero, one target, etc. Fonvizin's work, in complete contrast, is what might be termed a “composite” satire, i.e., a satire with several themes, several heroes, several targets, etc. As a result, his play is a generalized picture of the social morals and manners of Russia's noble society of the time. Holberg's play, on the contrary, does not focus on this aspect at all.

By no stretch of the imagination can Fonvizin's comedy, The Brigadier, be considered a masterpiece of dramatic composition. It lacks action, the content is far-fetched, there is little character development, and so forth. Nevertheless, The Brigadier is a valuable contribution to Russian dramaturgy, for it is the first successful depiction—completely free of foreign overtones—of Russian morals and manners. As a microcosm of Russian society, it has an air of freedom and an originality which captures the spirit of the time. For the first time on the Russian stage all the character types are clearly Russian, even their colloquial language accents this illusion. It seems to me that the arguments advanced for the influence of Jean de France on The Brigadier were based primarily on extrinsic considerations and simply disregard some rather essential determinative criteria. Moreover, a borrowed theme per se, if this is indeed the case, is insufficient verification of influence. Any attempt to establish the extent, if any, of indirect influence, becomes, because of the very nature of the problem, an academic question.

Notes

1. M. N. Longinov, Russkii teatr v Peterburge i Moskve 1749-1774 (St. Petersburg, 1873), pp. 14-22.

2. Unfortunately, Elagin's adaption of Jean de France has been lost. However, it is briefly summarized in Drammaticheskoi slovar' (St. Petersburg, 1881), p. 55.

3. N. S. Tikhonravov, Materialy dlia polnogo sobraniia sochinenii D.I. Fonvizina (St. Petersburg, 1894), pp. vi-vii.

4. A. N. Veselovskii, Zapadnoe vliianie v novoi russkoi literature (Moscow, 1916), p. 82.

5. B. Varneke, Istoriia russkogo teatra XVII-XIX vekov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1939), p. 116.

6. A. Stender-Petersen, “Holberg og den Komedie i det 18de arhundrede,” Holberg Aarbog (København, 1923), pp. 100-101.

7. Ibid., (København, 1924), p. 152.

8. Ibid., (København, 1925), p. 93.

9. G. A. Gukovskii, Russkaia literature XVIII veka (Moscow, 1939), p. 353.

10. For example see: B. N. Aseev, Russkii dramaticheskii teatr XVII-XVIII vekov (Moscow, 1958); P. N. Berkov, Vvedenie v izuchenie istorii russkoi literatury (Leningrad, 1964); L. I. Kulakova, D. I. Fonvizin (Leningrad, 1966); G. P. Makogonenko, Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin. Tvorcheskii put' (Moscow-Leningrad, 1961); M. Muratov, Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (Moscow-Leningrad, 1953); K. V. Pigarev, Tvorchestvo Fonvizina (Moscow, 1954); P. E. Shames, Fonvizin v russkoi kritike (Moscow, 1958) and V. N. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, Russkii teatr vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka (Moscow, 1960).

11. D. J. Welsh, Russian Comedy 1765-1823 (The Hague, 1966).

12. H. B. Segal, The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia. A History and Anthology, 2 vols. (New York, 1967).

13. D. Blagoi, Fonvizin (Moscow, 1945), pp. 74-76.

14. D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature From Its Beginnings to 1900 (New York, 1958), p. 55.

15. Marc Slonim, An Outline of Russian Literature (New York, 1959), p. 21.

16. H. Brix, Ludvig Holbergs Komedier, Den Danske Skueplads (København, 1942), pp. 69-71.

17. According to Stender-Petersen, Jean de France also influenced Sumarokov's comedy The Monsters. See A. Stender-Petersen, “Holberg of den Komedie i det 18de ärhundrede,” Holberg Aarbog (København, 1923), p. 115.