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In a small, corrupt provincial town, the mayor learns that a government inspector is coming from St Petersburg in disguise. Panic spreads among the officials, who all have something to hide: the judge takes bribes in hunting puppies, the hospital is a disgrace, the postmaster opens everyone's letters. When they hear that a young man from Petersburg has been staying at the inn without paying, they take him for the inspector. Khlestakov, a penniless, empty-headed clerk, happily accepts their bribes, flirts with the mayor's wife and daughter, and leaves just in time.
Context and significance
Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) wrote the comedy in 1836, reportedly from an idea given to him by Pushkin, and Tsar Nicholas I laughed at its first performance. Its epigraph, 'Don't blame the mirror if your face is crooked', sums up its satire of bureaucracy. This translation is by Thomas Seltzer. Read Gogol's Dead Souls.
About the author
Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was born in the Ukrainian countryside and moved to St Petersburg to make his name, where his comic tales of Ukrainian village life won the friendship of Pushkin. His play The Government Inspector, his story The Overcoat and his novel Dead Souls made him the great satirist of Russian life.
He spent years in Rome, became increasingly religious and tormented, and shortly before his death burned most of the second part of Dead Souls. Later Russian writers, Dostoevsky among them, acknowledged their debt to him; read Dostoevsky's Poor Folk to see it.