[In the following essay, Alexandrov contends that the emphasis by Soviet critics on the historical and political themes in The Minor has overshadowed other features of the play, notably its parallels with several works by Enlightenment thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau and the dialogic structure of the play, which serves to undermine its overt Enlightenment message as articulated by the play's “positive” characters.]

Most of what has been written about Fonvizin's famous comedy The Minor (Nedorosl', 1782) has come from the pens of Soviet scholars. As one might expect, they have focused on the relation of the play's themes to Russian history and culture, and, with particular zeal, on the supposed diligence with which Fonvizin scourged abuses rampant under the eighteenth-century Russian monarchy. One Soviet investigator wittily summarized this preoccupation as follows:

In the literary-methodological hierarchy he is assigned a place somewhere at the foot of the mountain (Classicism), as well as closer to the sun (pre-Realist), and almost at the very summit (Enlightenment Realist), and, finally, there where one can clearly hear the cries of eagles (Realist).

A view of the play as rooted in specifically Russian social problems can also be found in Western criticism.¹

Are such approaches to The Minor the only ones possible? And how accurate are the readings they produce?

It seems obvious that one could not hope to understand the play fully without considering its formal characteristics, particularly as they relate to the themes. However, except for passing comments in the criticism about the play's general adherence to Neo-Classicism's five acts and three unities, the formal features of Fonvizin's masterpiece have received hardly any attention. It would be reasonable, therefore, to begin a new reading of the play by focusing on one of the most fundamental features of any work written for the stage—the form of its dialogues. Although there are scattered, and occasionally illuminating comments in the criticism about the syntactical and lexical features of individual characters' speech styles in The Minor,² there have been no studies of the nature of their exchanges from the point of view of the larger patterns of communication they embody.

Perhaps the most obvious feature of the play's dialogues is the complete harmony among the positive characters. All permutations of pairings from among Sof'ja, Pravdin, Starodum, and Milon yield dialogues in which the characters understand each other immediately and agree fully.

Pravdin's conversation with Starodum in the first scene of the third act is one of the most striking instances of such harmony. (They are friends, of course, but the disharmony in the Prostakov-Skotinin family demonstrates—as I will show—that close ties between individuals do not necessarily lead to understanding.) Pravdin and Starodum speak of their mutual respect and affection for each other, and of the latter's principles of education. Their agreement is total, and although they seem to interrupt each other, as the ellipses ending their statements suggest, they actually complete each other's thoughts:

PRAVDIN.
You speak the truth. A man's true merit is his soul …
STARODUM.
Without it the most enlightened, clever person is a sorry creature […] precisely from such beasts [i.e., the Prostakovs] I came to free …
PRAVDIN.
Your niece. I know. She's here. Let's go.

Later in the play, when they are speaking about what typifies the good ruler, Pravdin remarks “That is just. A great sovereign gives …,” and Starodum concludes the thought with “Favors and friendship to those whom he will” (V, i).³

Starodum is of course a raisonneur figure in Fonvizin's comedy, which requires that there be a receptacle into which he can pour his wisdom and precepts. Thus it is not surprising that Sof'ja should exclaim during their major tête-à-tête: “Uncle! Each of your words will be incised into my heart”; and, even more significantly, “Your explanation, Uncle, resembles my inner feeling, which I could not express” (IV, ii).

Milon and Starodum hit it off immediately as well. Planning to examine the young man's moral character, Starodum ends by acting as if Milon's principles are coterminous with his own. “I understand bravery thusly …” Milon concludes his analysis, and Starodum's voice quickly interweaves “As one who has it in his soul must understand it. Embrace me, my friend” (IV, vi). And a few lines later, Sof'ja and Pravdin add their voices to the harmony to form a veritable quartet: “Sof'ja (kissing Starodum's hands). Who can be more fortunate than I! / Pravdin. How truly happy I am!” The stage direction “Together” underscores their agreement.

If harmony in sentiments expressed, and frequent syntactical continuity across the boundaries between different characters' remarks typify the dialogic relations among the positive characters, this is certainly not the case for the negative ones. The dominant note for them is struck in the play's first three scenes, which deal with the coat that has been sewn for Mitrofan by Triška. Mrs. Prostakov berates him for having made it too tight, and refuses to understand his explanations that he was not trained as a tailor. When summoned to pass judgment on the tailoring, her husband blurts out that the coat is “somewhat loose.” Then, seeing her anger at this remark, he explains “But I thought, Mother dear, that that's how it seems to you,” suggesting he had misunderstood her mien when she had asked him what he thought of it (I, iii).

An inability to understand or be understood, born ultimately of her petty egotism, continues to dog Mrs. Prostakov later in the play. When the nanny Eremeevna says that Mitrofan has already eaten five rolls, Mrs. Prostakov infers incorrectly that Eremeevna begrudges him a sixth. And when Eremeevna attempts to explain that this was hardly her intention, Mrs. Prostakov ignores her and turns instead to Mitrofan (I, iv). Later, Mrs. Prostakov is shown to have misunderstood the “Edict about the Freedom of the Nobility” (“Ukaz o vol'nosti dvorjanstva,” 1762—which freed the nobility from compulsory state service) as a carte blanche to abuse her chattel (V, iv). In this case, she has failed to understand an impersonal text, as it were, and the resultant irony is entirely at her expense.

A similar situation occurs when her brother, Skotinin, exclaims with regard to Sof'ja “Well, may I be a son of a swine if I don't become her husband, or if Mitrofan is ugly” (II, iii). Again, the irony in his remark is at his own expense, and since he is not aware of it, he can be said not to have understood fully his own words.

The major conflict between Mitrofan and his uncle, Skotinin, is foreshadowed in the simple misunderstanding that occurs between them in the second act. Skotinin has learned that his sister wants to marry Sof'ja to Mitrofan rather than to him, as had originally been planned. Mitrofan, however, has apparently not yet been told anything about this. Thus, when his uncle asks him if he wants to get married, Mitrofan naively and innocently answers that he has wanted to for a long time. Skotinin, however, misunderstands this to be a design on Sof'ja on his nephew's part, and would have attacked Mitrofan physically were it not for Eremeevna's intercession (II, iv). In stark contrast to the a priori harmony among the positive characters, therefore, conflict due to misunderstandings born of spiritual baseness typifies the relations among the negative ones.

A major portion of the play consists of scenes in which positive and negative characters come into contact, and this is where additional numerous instances of failed communication appear.

Mrs. Prostakov is once again often at fault. When Sof'ja enters with a letter and exclaims that her uncle is now in Moscow after no one has heard from him for a long time, Mrs. Prostakov's reaction is “(frightened, angrily). What! Starodum, your uncle, alive? And you're trying to make out that he is resurrected!” Despite Sof'ja's protestations and explanations, Mrs. Prostakov at first continues to refuse to believe that Starodum is alive and that the letter is not in fact from some lover. Then it transpires that neither the Prostakovs nor Skotinin can read, reinforcing the impression that they have difficulty understanding language, especially that of their betters (I, vi).

This failure to communicate is underscored when Pravdin appears. Mrs. Prostakov introduces him to Skotinin, whose response, however, is “Very well, sir; And what's your surname? I didn't hear.” Pravdin repeats his name, but Skotinin does not really seem to listen and instead asks about Pravdin's origins. Finally, in a manner anticipating that of Čexov's characters, who often talk past, rather than to each other, Skotinin asks “And may I ask, sir, not knowing your name and patronymic, are there any pigs on your estates?” (I, vii).

Even when seemingly effective contact is established between positive and negative characters, it turns out that the Prostakovs and Skotinin fail to understand so much of what was said that they could in fact be accused of not having understood what was most important. Pravdin reads Starodum's letter to them, which contains a statement to the effect that through hard work and honesty he earned ten thousand rubles. The reference to the money is all that the Prostakovs and Skotinin hear. And when Pravdin offers to finish reading the letter, Skotinin remarks “What for? You could read for five years and not come up with anything better than ten thousand,” showing that he was moved only on the level of base greed, or that he did not in fact fully grasp the meaning of the letter.

Like his sister, Skotinin also fails to understand expressions the positive characters use. When Pravdin tells him that because of his fondness for pigs “your wife will have no peace [xudoj pokoj],” Skotinin thinks this is a reference to poor living quarters, and answers that he will give Sof'ja his best room (II, iii).

Although the negative characters cannot rise to the level of the positive ones, as it were, and understand fully what they say, the positive characters do understand the negative ones completely. However, the words they address to the Prostakovs and Skotinin are usually laden with irony that totally escapes the negative characters, which means, in other words, that incomplete communication still reigns. The reader or viewer of the play is of course aware of the double meanings in the positive characters' words and is thus drawn into the play on their side.

These instances of irony are quite obvious. When Mrs. Prostakov claims to have a peaceable character that leads her to never answer abuse, Starodum comments that he noticed this about her as soon as she appeared in the door (II, v). In fact, she had made her entrance enraged and trying to get at Skotinin's face (II, iii). A total lack of understanding based on irony also characterizes Skotinin's conversation with Starodum and Pravdin when he joins them and Sof'ja and Milon in the fourth act (IV, vii).

In the end of the play, when the negative characters are confronted by Pravdin and Starodum, who act to stop their abuses, incomplete understanding is still the rule. Discovered trying to abduct Sof'ja, Mrs. Prostakov and her ilk beg for mercy from both her victim and Starodum. But when they receive it out of the goodness of the positive characters' hearts, Mrs. Prostakov immediately leaps to her feet planning vengeance against the servants who let her down (V, iv). Sof'ja's and Starodum's magnanimity obviously did not touch her at all, and she saw it only as a reprieve that would allow her tyranny to continue. Later, Mrs. Prostakov does understand the fact of the matter when Pravdin informs her that her estate is being taken away and placed under government trusteeship, but it is significant that she does not seem to understand why this is being done.

In a neat reversal of the dialogues between positive characters—when one interrupts and completes another's remarks that end in ellipses—Skotinin receives instruction from Pravdin in the end of the play. Planning to return to his own estate and warn his friends of what he has just heard, Skotinin says “I'll tell them about their people, that they should. …” At this point Pravdin supplies what could not possibly have occurred to Skotinin himself: “Love them more, or at the very least. …” But Skotinin cannot complete this noble thought because he is not functioning on the same level of meaning or morality as Pravdin, and utters only the expectant “Well. …” Pravdin finally fills the pause with “At least they shouldn't abuse them,” which Skotinin repeats like a parrot (V, iv). Clearly, Skotinin understood only the threat for him and his friends implicit in what happened to his sister.

Both complete and partial misunderstandings are of course stock devices of comedy. But the extent to which Fonvizin uses them in The Minor exceeds by far what one finds in other comedies, such as his own The Brigadier (Brigadir, 1769), Sumarokov's The Imaginary Cuckold (Rogonosec po voobraženiju, 1772), or Kapnist's Chicane (Jabeda, 1798) (or, for that matter, in a major example of French Neo-Classical comedy like Molière's Le Misanthrope [1666]). When seen in combination with the play's overt themes and the continuities between the positive characters' remarks, which are distinctly non-comic, the numerous instances of failed communication in Fonvizin's play suggest that he may not have been moved by an exclusively comic or satirical spirit.

It is thus most interesting to note that the patterns of communication established on the level of dialogue in The Minor operate even on the non-verbal level. In the second act, there is a marvelous mute moment when Mitrofan and Skotinin stop and stare at each other. Skotinin initiates this simulacrum of an exchange because he wants to “read” Mitrofan and find out if he has any designs on Sof'ja. And although Mitrofan has no idea what his uncle wants, he assumes the required pose (II, iv). Both thus produce a grotesque parody of the understanding that is supposed to flow from looking into one another's eyes, “the windows of the soul.” Milon's ironic comment “Here's a fine explanation” is fully appropriate.

The emotional distance between Starodum and the Prostakovs is suggested by the distaste with which Starodum responds to their embraces as well as their words (III, v). But the scene in which they greet him is also especially noteworthy because of Milon's presence. Seeing the Prostakovs clinging and fawning, he says to Pravdin that he will introduce himself to Starodum later because he does not want to be associated with the Prostakovs. He then remains on stage for several pages without participating in the action. Finally, when Starodum is about to leave, we encounter the following stage direction: “Seeing Milon, who bows respectfully to him, [Starodum] bows courteously to him as well” (III, v). In other words, despite the agitation going on around him, Starodum is able to discern Milon and respond to his gracious gesture in kind. And the fact that Milon had refused to include his greetings with the Prostakovs' underscores the a priori harmony among the positive characters in contrast to the discord among the negative ones.

Other instances of successful, immediate, non-verbal communication among positive characters include Starodum recognizing Sof'ja as soon as he lays eyes on her: “Here are the lines of her mother's face. Here is my Sof'ja”; and she responds “My heart does not deceive me” (III, ii). Starodum had of course known her as a child, but it is still noteworthy that they would identify each other so quickly just by looking at each other.

A more elaborate instance of complex non-verbal communication occurs between Sof'ja and Milon. Stage directions indicate that “Sof'ja tells Milon with glances [vzorami] that Starodum is before him; Milon understands her” (III, iii). This is rather a lot to express with mere gazes or glances—in fact, how could one communicate all this information without elaborate gestures? But the point is of course that Sof'ja's and Milon's souls and hearts are in tune—unlike those of uncle and nephew during their oeillade.

That the positive characters are higher on the ladder of humanity in comparison to the negative ones is of course obvious to anyone who reads The Minor. But focusing on the abstract patterns of communication among various combinations of characters reveals the extent to which different members of society are at odds with each other, with the positive ones nearly totally misunderstood by, and consequently isolated from the negative ones.

Indeed, the fact that the negative characters cannot really comprehend their betters puts into serious question the efficacy of all the high-minded ideals Pravdin tries to implement as the agent of the crown. Moreover, Starodum's remarks in particular about the Russian society he has known beyond the confines of the Prostakov estate—the army and the court at St. Petersburg (III, i)—suggest that he, as the paradigmatically positive character, has felt isolated from almost all of contemporary society, as well as superior to it at the same time. The only effect the positive characters have on their social peers (but moral inferiors) with whom they come into contact is to force them to obey a government that is backed by troops. And although it is true that Cyfirkin, the ex-soldier turned arithmetic teacher, is singled out from among the other minor characters because of his honesty, which he says was inculcated in him in the army, the general attitude of the positive characters toward the lesser classes is an authoritative one as well. When Mrs. Prostakov hears that a unit of soldiers has arrived in her village, she expresses fear that they will ruin her. Pravdin can find no better way to calm her than by saying “Don't be afraid. They are led by an officer, of course, who will not allow them to commit any effrontery” (I, viii), suggesting that only enforced discipline, and not the soldiers' own characters, keeps them in check.

The complement to the positive characters' sense of being apart is at best only a very primitive communication among the negative characters on the level of the basest emotions such as greed or fear. Their existence is dominated by conflict that also includes a high degree of mutual misunderstanding.

The significance of the form of The Minor's dialogues emerges fully only when one considers it in relation to the play's overt themes. As has long been recognized, the positive characters' remarks are rooted in fundamental Enlightenment beliefs in human reason, progress and perfectibility that were widespread in eighteenth-century Russia. However, instead of reviewing the rather obvious parallels between the play and various general Enlightenment formulae, I would like to suggest the utility of attempting to link the play's themes directly to their specific sources in individual European thinkers. This would serve two different but not unrelated purposes. The first is that we would still have the thematic context necessary for understanding the significance of the play's dialogic form. The second is that it is worth reexamining the dominant critical view of Fonvizin as preoccupied with uniquely Russian social ills. After all, the Age of Reason, to which Fonvizin clearly belonged, was concerned more with universal truths about man in general than with individuals bound by place, space and time. Thus, if it is possible to demonstrate that the ideas expressed in The Minor are congruent with specific formulations in the writings of particular European thinkers, rather than simply with a general Enlightenment ethos present throughout Europe during the late eighteenth century, the view of The Minor as being a critique of Catherine's Russia alone might have to be modified.

However, trying to unravel and trace all the themes that link Fonvizin's play to Europe would obviously be a task beyond the scope of anything short of a book.⁴ A practical first step, therefore, would be to concentrate on a limited part of this larger picture—on the parallels that can be drawn between the dominant complex of ideas in the play and one major figure in eighteenth-century European culture, especially one whose writings Fonvizin may have admired.

Identifying the latter is simplified by the fact that Fonvizin himself provides a lead. In his famous series of letters from France, he reveals how he actively sought firsthand contacts with leading cultural figures of the day, something that was very much in the spirit of the age. It is therefore particularly significant that when writing to his sister from Paris in April of 1778, Fonvizin confided that he had been “deceived as much” in nearly all the famous writers and thinkers he had seen as he had been “in all of France.” The one important exception was Rousseau. Fonvizin had in fact made an appointment to visit Rousseau, and was saddened to learn of his unexpected death a week before the scheduled interview. “And so, fate did not allow me to see the renowned Rousseau!” Fonvizin lamented in his letter, and then added a compliment, albeit a somewhat backhanded one: “But you are right that he was very nearly more estimable and honest [čestnee] than all these other gentlemen, the philosophers of our age.”⁵

The well-known Soviet scholar of the eighteenth century Makogonenko has described Fonvizin's contacts with various versions of Rousseau's Confessions in the years immediately preceding his work on The Minor. He concludes that these memoirs were “an event” in Fonvizin's artistic development, because they revealed to him “the whole enormous complexity of the spiritual and psychological life of man.” To my knowledge, this is the only reference in Soviet or Western criticism to Rousseau's influence on The Minor specifically.⁶ But the assertion Makogonenko makes is actually more deceptive than illuminating because he does not follow it up with an analysis of the play from the point of view of what he considers Rousseau's influence to have been. In fact, his remark should probably be taken as simply an attempt to force Fonvizin up the mountain of “realism” (with all the automatic positive associations this has in Soviet criticism) to which I referred above. One would indeed be hard pressed to see the characters in The Minor as much more than variants of familiar Neo-Classical types.

However, there is direct evidence that Rousseau was important as a model for Fonvizin. It is provided by the fact that Fonvizin began, but could not finish before his own death, an autobiographical memoir in which he imitated Rousseau's Confessions self-consciously and openly (albeit not very consistently)—the Čistoserdečnoe priznanie v delax moix i pomyšlenijax (Candid Confession of My Acts and Thoughts).⁷ Thus, Fonvizin's emphasis in his letter to his sister on Rousseau's “honesty” in comparison to other luminaries may be an indication of the appeal that Rousseau's seemingly frank and egregiously individualistic memoir had for him.

But this was of course only one side of Rousseau, and it is highly unlikely Fonvizin was unaware of the full range of his thought. Perhaps more than any other major figure in eighteenth-century Europe, Rousseau was an intellectual hybrid: if in his Confessions, and his highly influential epistolary novel, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, he was an early formulator and promulgator of Sentimental individualism, in his numerous other writings Rousseau acted like a lens by gathering many of the rays of thought that were widespread throughout the Enlightenment.

Given the fact that Rousseau was a representative of the Age of Reason, is it likely that one could differentiate with total certainty between what was “in the air” in eighteenth-century European and Russian thought and what Fonvizin may have gotten from Rousseau directly? Probably not without a detailed examination of Fonvizin's, Rousseau's and other influential European thinkers' entire legacies. Thus the parallels I draw below between Rousseau's formulations and The Minor should not be seen as proof of Fonvizin's dependence on Rousseau, but as a suggestion that such influence from abroad was possible, and that the fuller meaning of Fonvizin's play (incorporating both its formal and thematic dimensions) might be better sought in a European rather than an exclusively Russian cultural context.

Parallels between Rousseau's ideas and the play's themes can be found, I believe, in a network of references in The Minor to (1) education, (2) the theory of correct government, and (3) the corruption of what passes for civilization among most men, especially when contrasted with the moral purity of man in a state of nature.

Starodum sounds a Rousseauistic note when he describes how he made his fortune in Siberia:

I decided to retire for several years to that land where one can acquire money without exchanging it for one's conscience, without ignoble service or robbing one's fatherland; where one demands money from the earth itself, which is more just than human beings, does not know partiality, and pays effort alone faithfully and generously.

A few lines down he adds: “Follow nature, and you will never be poor. Follow the opinions of men, and you will never be rich” (III, ii).

The historical fact that the eighteenth century was the time when Russia was beginning the exploitation of the vast natural resources of the Urals and Siberia would of course only add to the relevance of Rousseau's ideas for Fonvizin. Indeed, Starodum's moralistically colored preference for a dependence on nature rather than on civilized men sounds much like the following well-known formulation from Rousseau's Emile:

There are two kinds of dependence: that on things, which derives from nature, and that on men, which derives from society. Dependence on things, being non-moral, does no harm to liberty and does not engender vices. Dependence on men, being without order, … engenders them all, and it is by means of this that the master and the slave mutually deprave each other.⁸

Rousseau returned repeatedly to his favorite seminal ideas in various guises in his different writings. And there is no reason to suspect that Fonvizin would have tried to model his characters' remarks on any particular texts of Rousseau's. Thus it is probably neither possible, nor, in fact, necessary to identify specific passages in particular works by Rousseau that match specific formulations in The Minor. Moreover, the easy transitions that Fonvizin's characters make in their remarks, from morality to government, to education, resemble the interconnectedness of these topics in Rousseau's thought, and further complicate any attempt to make specific matches between his texts and characters' utterances in the play. The pairings that I present below are meant to be illustrative, therefore, not definitive.

Emile and the entire question of education, which was a central concern of Rousseau's, and of the Enlightenment in general of course, also seems to be echoed in The Minor. Fonvizin's title points to the Petrine educational regulation regarding “minor” sons of the nobility—namely, that they were obligated to achieve a particular level of learning before they could either marry or enter the military. Those who had not attained the required minimal knowledge of religion, grammar and arithmetic would have to enter the army or navy in the lowest rank.

In addition to the comic scenes about Mitrofan and his three tutors, the theme of correct tutorship recurs in the serious didactic scenes, where it is attached to Starodum. One of the first things he says in the play when he arrives addresses the question of education. He explains his character and behavior, which Pravdin admires, as the result of his father's influence: “My father brought me up the way it used to be done, and I did not find it necessary to reeducate myself.” Moreover, Starodum implies that his father was himself the pupil of Peter the Great, which, in the play's terms, functions as a reference to the Golden Age.⁹ Starodum also openly refers to himself as having laid the ground work for Sof'ja's upbringing and moral education (vospitanie; III, ii), and tells her that he plans to continue guiding her in this manner (III, v). Lastly, Starodum fulfills the role of tutor not only for the positive characters in the play, but for its audience as well. It is known that contemporary theatergoers were especially fond of his sententious moralizing, and that Fonvizin had planned to publish a journal named after Starodum (“Mr. Old Thought” in Russian) in which his favorite character would have had a platform for additional instruction.¹⁰

In Emile Rousseau presents adolescence as the period in a young man's development that is fraught with most dangers, and which, as a result, requires the skilled guidance of a tutor. The point of the tutor's influence is to make his pupil into a moral and social being.¹¹ This is of course precisely what the Prostakovs and the three comic tutors fail to accomplish with regard to Mitrofan (who is an adolescent sixteen years old), and what Starodum apparently has achieved with Sof'ja: “I would like it not to be forgotten,” he tells Pravdin, “that even with all the areas of learning the most important goal of all human knowledge is morality [blagonravie]” (V, i).

It is most interesting to note that a number of specific parallels between Emile and The Minor also suggest that Rousseau's treatise on education may have been important for Fonvizin. Sophia is the name of Emile's intended in Rousseau's work, and this is of course the name Fonvizin gives his ingenue. Just as Rousseau expresses admiration for Fénelon's famous moralistic and didactic novel Les Aventures de Télémaque, which his Sophia enjoys, Fonvizin has Starodum express hearty approval of Sof'ja's reading of Fénelon's treatise on “the education of young women” (presumably, Traité de l'éducation des filles) because “He who wrote Télémaque would not pervert morals with his pen” (IV, ii). Similarly, as Rousseau has Emile continue his education at the school of hard knocks by making him face Sophia's infidelity after their marriage in the sequel to Emile, Emile et Sophie, ou les Solitaries,¹² Sof'ja after her marriage to Milon has to face his passion for a “despicable woman” in Fonvizin's sequel to The Minor, the journal entitled Drug čestnyx ljudej ili Starodum (The Friend of Honest People, or Old Thought).¹³ Indeed, Fonvizin in his sequel uses the same device as Rousseau when he has the pupil write to the teacher in order to reveal his sad state of affairs. The only difference is that in Rousseau's case Emile writes, while in Fonvizin's, Sof'ja does; but this in turn simply reflects the fact that Fonvizin made the young woman the target of Starodum's pedagogic outpourings in the play (in contrast to Mitrofan as the negative example), while Rousseau's pupil was a young man.¹⁴

The role of the tutor intersects both in Rousseau and in The Minor with that of the ideal ruler who is, as it were, the tutor for an entire people. As one scholar of Rousseau puts it: “Emile contains and depends upon a new personification of prophetic intelligence and wisdom, corresponding to the Lawgiver of the Contrat social. This is the Gouverneur or Tutor.”¹⁵ Fonvizin embodies a similar concept in a dialogue between Pravdin and Starodum. Speaking of the proper role for a great sovereign, the former says “In order that there not be a lack of worthy people, a special effort in education and upbringing is now being made. …” Starodum rushes in to complete the thought:

Indeed it must be the pledge of a state's well-being. We see all the unfortunate consequences of bad upbringing. Well, what good can come to the fatherland from Mitrofanuška, for whom his ignoramus parents even pay money to ignoramus teachers!

(V, i)

The nature of the government and the laws that Rousseau envisages being implemented in an ideal state also resemble what Fonvizin has his positive characters advocate in the play. As he shows particularly clearly in Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, Rousseau shared the Enlightenment predilection for “natural law” and conceived of correct government as the careful enforcement of man's inborn, natural inclinations. The community of Clarens, in which both the human beings and the natural setting itself are subtly guided in directions inferred from Nature by the wise Julie and her husband Monsieur de Wolmar, is an ideal model for a state, and the positive antipode to the depraved Paris St. Preux visits and describes elsewhere in the novel.

This conception also receives theoretical expression in Emile, in a continuation of the passage quoted above:

If there is any way of curing this evil in society, it is by substituting law for the individual, and by arming the general will with real strength superior to any individual will. If the laws of nations, like the laws of nature, could have an inflexibility that no human force could ever overcome, the dependence of men would become again that of things. In the Republic, all the advantages of the state of nature would be reunited with those of the civil state; to the liberty that keeps man free of vice would be joined the morality that elevates him to virtue.¹⁶

Fonvizin was of course not interested in a republican form of government, and none of his positive characters mentions it in the play. But Rousseau also did not always view this as an ideal form of rule, as he demonstrated in the quasi-utopian community of Clarens, which is a benevolent dictatorship based on laws supposedly deduced from Nature. The scenes in the novel also demonstrate that Rousseau's cult of Nature was not necessarily a desire to return man to a primitive state, but, rather, to realize his natural capacities to the fullest.

In The Minor a comparable view is expressed, I believe, by Starodum when he says: “A great sovereign is a wise sovereign. His task is to show people their real good.” In a state ruled by such a sovereign “all will soon sense that each must seek his happiness and personal benefits only in that which is legal” (V, i), which sounds like a reference to Rousseau's seminal concept of the General Will (volonté générale). He also adds that as soon as all the people in a state recognize that they are ruled by just laws, they will not be able to help being moral and good.

Pravdin is a concrete example of an individual who functions according to these principles. He has arrived at the Prostakov estate in his capacity as the agent of the local namestnik. These posts of “governors-general” were established in 1775, and the individuals appointed to them were granted far-reaching authority in overseeing the administrative and judicial systems in several provinces at the same time. Pravdin's explanation to Milon of what his charge in fact was, is a blend of both obedience and natural inclination that also characterizes the proper relation between government and the governed for Rousseau:

I have been appointed to the local governor-general's office. My orders are to travel through this district, and, moreover, out of the urgings of my own heart [italics mine] I do not miss taking note of those depraved ignoramuses, who, having complete authority over their people, inhumanly utilize it for evil ends.

(II, i)

In this, Pravdin is enacting the governor-general's own relation to the “philanthropic aims of the highest authority,” which resembles Starodum's relation to his father, and through him, to Peter the Great.

Soviet scholars systematically stress serfdom as being the great social ill Fonvizin set out to pillory in the play. They cite as evidence for this the fact that Pravdin removes Mrs. Prostakov from running her estate because of her abuses of her people, as well as Pravdin's and Starodum's discussions of such abuses. But it is important to realize that Rousseau's conception of contemporary European society, as contrasted with his hypothetical ideal society, is characterized by an interlocking network of what might be termed master-slave relationships that derive inevitably from an unequal distribution of wealth. In his “Discours sur l'origine … de l'inégalité …” (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) he puts it as follows:

Having been formerly free and independent, behold man subjugated, as it were, by a multitude of new needs to all of Nature, and especially to his fellow men, whose slave he becomes in a sense, at the same time that he becomes their master; rich, he needs their services; poor, he needs their assistance.

Competition and acquisitiveness that lead to a state of perpetual conflict in contemporary societies is the result.¹⁷ Thus, whatever objections Fonvizin may have had to serfdom in Russia—and it is not at all clear that he was objecting to more than abuses of serfdom in the play—could also be seen in the broader context of Rousseau's critique of economic inequality in “civilized” society in general, which is, of course, in harmony with the typically reformist tendencies widespread throughout the entire Enlightenment.

An essential aspect of Rousseau's thought that has a direct bearing on his conception of how fallen societies originate is his distinction in the “Discours sur l'origine … de l'inégalité …” between what he termed “amour de soi” or “amour de soi-même” and “amour-propre” (in English: “self-interest” and “selfish interest”). The former is a legitimate human trait and can be traced back to nature, while the latter is a debased form of self-interest that leads to conflict and competition between men as well as within the individual, “between the desire for long-term and short-term well-being or satisfaction.”¹⁸

Starodum makes the same sort of distinction in The Minor. He says that while at court he found

not self-esteem, but, so to say, self-love. Here people love themselves excellently, look after themselves alone, fuss only about the present moment. You won't believe it: I saw many people there who during their entire lives never once thought about either ancestors or descendants.

(III, i)

Milon, as a positive character, is privy to understanding certain fundamental truths about the human condition. As an officer he is concerned with questions of bravery, and it is interesting to note that he makes a distinction between two forms that are underlain by the difference between long-term and short-term gain, somewhat like self-interest and selfish interest. Milon finds “true fearlessness in the soul and not in the heart. … In our military craft the soldier must be brave, and the commander—fearless. He cooly foresees all degrees of danger and takes the necessary actions.” And a few lines later he adds: “bravery of the heart is proven during the hour of battle, while fearlessness of the soul—during all trials, and all of life's situations” (IV, vi).

Rousseau also makes a comparable distinction between forms of courage in his “Discours sur les sciences et les arts” (Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts). In criticizing the effects of civilization on human beings, he says of his contemporary military men: “I hear great praise for their bravery on a day of battle, but no one tells me anything about how they endure overwork, how they resist the harshness of the seasons and the bad weather.” He goes on to argue, “even in the soldier, a bit more strength and vigor would perhaps be more necessary than so much bravery [i.e., as shown by charging into enemy fire], which would not save him from death.” And although courageous, officers can still be bad if they do not improve their troops' endurance, or plan for the long term, and concentrate only on winning battles.¹⁹

In addition to suggesting parallels between the ideas expressed in The Minor and aspects of Rousseau's thought, the preceding discussion shows that the play shares the general Enlightenment faith in the possibility of communicating moral and social precepts by word or example. Or so it would seem until one brings into consideration the fact that the negative characters do not really understand what the positive characters say to them. The significance of the play's dialogic form is therefore precisely that it undermines the play's overt Enlightenment messages as articulated by the positive characters. And the revealing fact that Starodum feels alienated from the society of his peers in the army and at court limits further the efficacy of his Enlightenment ideals. Indeed, the positive characters in the play emerge as a handful of morally and intellectually superior beings lost in a largely alien and uncomprehending world.

As it happens, the aloofness of a small coterie of positive characters from a fallen, strife-torn society can also be found in Rousseau and his image of himself as outsider that appears in a number of his works—specifically, those that are usually classified as Sentimental. In Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, for example, when Rousseau's alter ego, St. Preux, is in Paris, he describes in highly negative terms his attempts to establish human contact with the seemingly well-meaning natives. It is especially interesting that he speaks of this in terms of language: “My heart would speak, but it senses that it is not heard. It would answer, but no one says anything that can reach it. I don't understand the language of the country, and no one here understands mine.”²⁰ An absence of true communication also characterizes the relations among the depraved Parisians themselves:

And as everyone thinks of his own interest, and no one of the common good, and as individual interests are always opposed to each other, it's a perpetual clash of parties and cabals, an ebb and flow of prejudices and opposed opinions; those who are most excited are incited by others, and almost never know what it is all about.²¹

These words could be applied as easily to the Prostakov-Skotinins.

Ultimately, the sense of superiority and concomitant isolation Rousseau felt, apparently throughout much of his life, is crowned by its fullest expression in his Confessions, where he made the famous claim that “I am made unlike anyone I have ever seen; I dare believe I am unlike anyone who exists.”²² However, it is clear that the ethos Fonvizin articulates overtly through Starodum in The Minor does not place the same Sentimental value on the uniqueness of the individual as do the Confessions, even though the sense the reader has of the positive characters' isolation in the play is comparable.

Nevertheless, it is tempting to speculate that the dialogues' form in The Minor, because it shows the positive characters to be irreconcilably different not only from everyone else within the work, but also from the “implied” society existing outside it, may be an expression of pre-Romantic isolation like one finds in Rousseau. Even if this is the case, however, it remains moot whether or not a dialogic form opposed to the play's overtly articulated messages was the result of Fonvizin's conscious esthetic plan. My impression is that it would be wrong to suspect him of such elaborate intentional irony. But the presence of an individualistic undercurrent in The Minor's basically Neo-Classical world does increase the congruence between the play and Rousseau. And the tension between the form of the dialogues and the Enlightenment message of the play suggests that this venerable classic might well stand further reexamination from other perspectives that have not been traditional in Fonvizin criticism.

Notes

1. S. Vajman, “O xudožestvennom myšlenii Fonvizina,” Voprosy literatury, no. 10, 1973, 160-83; the quote is from 160. W. E. Brown (A History of 18th Century Russian Literature [Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1980], 241-42) stresses the centrality of the Russian “social system” for understanding the play. Studies of Fonvizin published in the Soviet Union include K. V. Pigarev, Tvorčestvo Fonvizina (M.: AN SSSR, 1954), chapter 5, “Nedorosl',” 151-215; V. N. Vsevolodskij-Gerngross, Fonvizin—Dramaturg: Posobie dlja učitelej (M.: Učpedgiz, 1960); G. P. Makogonenko, “D. I. Fonvizin,” in Russkie dramaturgi: XVIII vek, ed. G. P. Bernikov, et al. (3 vols.; M.-L.: Iskusstvo, 1959-62), I, 249-69; G. P. Makogonenko, Denis Fonvizin: Tvorčeskij put' (M.-L.: Xudožestvennaja literatura, 1961), chapter 8, “Komedija narodnaja,” 238-90; I. Isakovič, “Brigadir” i “Nedorosl'” D. I. Fonvizina (L.: Xudožestvennaja literatura, 1979); P. N. Berkov, Istorija russkoj komedii XVIII veka (L.: Nauka, 1977), 222-43. Possible influences of European plays on The Minor are investigated by B. G. Reizov, “K voprosu o zapadnyx paralleljax ‘Nedoroslja’,” in Rol' i značenie literatury XVIII veka v istorii russkoj kul'tury, ed. D. S. Lixačev, et al. (M.-L.: Nauka, 1966), 157-64. Other western studies include A. Strycek, La Russie des lumières: Denis Fonvizine (Paris: Librairie des Cinqs Continents, 1976), chapter 4, “Le Mineur,” 370-410; Charles A. Moser, Denis Fonvizin (Boston: Twayne, 1979), chapter 4, “The Minor,” 68-85.

2. For example, see Strycek, 400-403.

3. All quotations from Fonvizin are drawn from the following edition of his works: Pervoe polnoe sobranie sočinenij D.I. Fon-Vizina, kak original'nyx, tak i perevodnyx, 1761-1792 (SPb.-M.: K.K. Šamov, 1888). All translations from the Russian are my own. All references to act and scene in The Minor will be given in the text in the form (ACT, scene).

4. Limited attempts have been made to link Fonvizin to Diderot on the basis of the latter's dramatic theories. David Patterson, “Fonvizin's Nedorosl' as a Russian Representative of the Genre sérieux,” Comparative Literature Studies 14, no. 3 (Sept. 1977), 196-204, argues that Diderot's dramatic theory influenced The Minor. Ju. V. Stennik makes a similar argument for The Brigadier in “Dramaturgija russkogo klassicizma. Komedija,” in Istorija russkoj dramaturgii: XVII-pervaja polovina XIX veka, ed. Ju. K. Gerasimov, et al. (L.: Nauka, 1982), 125.

5. Pervoe polnoe sobranie sočinenij, 963-64.

6. Makogonenko, 242-44. David L. Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia: The Panin Party (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), suggests an indirect connection between Rousseau's Emile and The Minor through what he terms Starodumstvo—a complex of ideas developed by members of the “Panin Party” that was based on the views of Fonvizin's favorite character. As Ransel puts it, however, “Starodumstvo is a construct of the historian, not a concept developed systematically by Fonvizin or the Panins” (270, notes 18, 19). For an excellent brief discussion of Fonvizin's complex and changing attitudes toward Rousseau (with lesser attention to several other figures from the French Enlightenment), which, however, does not include a consideration of The Minor, see Ju. M. Lotman, “Russo i russkaja kul'tura XVIII veka,” in Èpoxa prosveščenija: Iz istorii meždunarodnyx svjazej russkoj literatury, ed. M. P. Alekseev (L.: Nauka, 1967), 249-57. For a general discussion of Rousseau's importance in Russia, see Ju. M. Lotman, “Russo i russkaja kul'tura XVIII-načala XIX veka,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau [Žan-Žak Russo], Traktaty, ed. V. S. Alekseev-Popov, et al. (Literaturnye pamjatniki, AN SSSR; M.: Nauka, 1969), 555-604.

7. See Pervoe polnoe sobranie sočinenij, 851-64.

8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, ou de l' education, in Oeuvres complètes (4 vols.; Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 11, 153, 169, 208; Paris: Gallimard, 1959-64), IV, 311. All translations from the French are my own. In my reading of Rousseau I have profited from J. H. Broome's study Rousseau: A Study of His Thought (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), an insightful survey of Rousseau's writings.

9. Vajman, 182, comes close to making the same point, but does not mention Rousseau.

10. See, for example, Moser, 78, Berkov, 225-26.

11. Emile, 489ff., 506ff.

12. Oeuvres complètes IV, 887ff.

13. Pervoe polnoe sobranie sočinenij, 830.

14. It is important to note also that The Minor differs from Emile in a number of major respects. Neither the benefits of physical exercise in the country, nor the avoidance of formal book learning during childhood is emphasized in the play; indeed, Mitrofan's upbringing is implicitly faulted for not being more stringent. Similarly, The Minor can be said to depart from Rousseau by showing that Skotinin and the Prostakovs have not benefited from living in the country. And simply because it is a play, The Minor represents a departure from Rousseau's ideas on the theater, which he condemned because of its supposedly deleterious effect on morality: see “J. J. Rousseau, citoyen de Genève, à M. d'Alembert, sur son article Genève dans l'Encyclopédie, et particulièrement sur son projet d'établir un théâtre de comédie en cette ville,” in Oeuvres complètes (13 vols; Paris: Hachette, 1883-91), I, 178-271.

    I would like to acknowledge here that in my discussion of parallels and divergences between Rousseau and The Minor I have profited from comments made by anonymous referees for SEEJ. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for all the opinions expressed in this article.

15. Broome, 77.

16. Emile, 311.

17. “Discours sur l'origine, et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes,” Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard), III, 174-75.

18. “Discours sur l'origine … de l'inégalité …,” 154, 156, 193; and Broome, 39-40.

19. “Discours sur les sciences et les arts,” Oeuvres complètes III, 23-24.

20. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, in Oeuvres complètes II, 231.

21. Julie, 234.

22. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Confessions, in Oeuvres complètes I, 6.