Denis Fonvizin
Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (Russian:
Дени́с Ива́нович Фонви́зин, from German: von Wiesen;
14 April 1744 or 1745 – 1 December 1792) is a
playwright of the Russian Enlightenment whose plays
are still staged today. His main works are two
satirical comedies which mock contemporary Russian
gentry.
Life
Born in Moscow, of a family of gentry of
Livonian descent, he received a good
education at the University of Moscow
and very early began writing and
translating. He entered the civil
service, becoming secretary to Count
Nikita Panin, one of the great noblemen
of Catherine the Great's reign. Because
of Panin's protection, Fonvizin was able
to write critical plays without fear of
being arrested, and, in the late 1760s,
he brought out the first of his two
famous comedies, The Brigadier-General.
A man of means, he was always a
dilettante rather than a professional
author, though he became prominent in
literary and intellectual circles. In
1777-78 he traveled abroad, the
principal aim of his journey being the
medical faculty of Montpellier. He
described his voyage in his Letters from
France — one of the most elegant
specimens of the prose of the period,
and the most striking document of that
anti-French nationalism which in the
Russian elite of the time of Catherine
went hand in hand with a complete
dependence on French literary taste.
In 1782 appeared Fonvizin's second
and best comedy The Minor, which
definitely classed him as the foremost
of Russian playwrights. His last years
were passed in constant suffering and
traveling abroad for his health. He died
in Saint Petersburg in 1792.
Works and influence
Fonvizin's reputation rests almost
entirely on his two comedies, which are
beyond doubt the most popular Russian
plays before Alexander Griboyedov's Woe
from Wit. They are both in prose and
adhere to the canons of classical
comedy. 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.
Both comedies are plays of social
satire with definite axes to grind. The
Brigadier-General is a satire against
the fashionable French semi-education of
the petits-maîtres. It is full of
excellent fun, and though less serious
than The Minor, it is better
constructed. But The Minor, though
imperfect in dramatic construction, is a
more remarkable work and justly
considered Fonvizin's masterpiece.
The point of the satire in The Minor
is directed against the brutish and
selfish crudeness and barbarity of the
uneducated country gentry. The central
character, Mitrofanushka, is the
accomplished type of vulgar and brutal
selfishness, unredeemed by a single
human feature — even his fondly doting
mother gets nothing from him for her
pains. The dialogue of these vicious
characters (in contrast to the stilted
language of the lovers and their
virtuous uncles) is true to life and
finely individualized; and they are all
masterpieces of characterization — a
worthy introduction to the great
portrait gallery of Russian fiction.
As a measure of its popularity,
several expressions from The Minor have
been turned into proverbs, and many
authors (amongst whom Alexandr Pushkin)
regularly cite from this play, or at
least hint to it by mentioning the
character's names.
