Журнал «Филоlogos»

PARADOXES OF СOMIC SKETCH TRADITIONS IN "JOKING SCENES" BY N.A. LEYKIN

Author: Morozova E.N.

The article deals with the drama heritage of N.A. Leykin on the material of the "joking scenes" "Figaro from Petersburg", "It is necessary to get accustomed!!!...", "In case of insolvency", "Medal", which embody some processes of the genre deformation of the comic sketch. Specific features of the comic sketch and their transformation in the analyzed works are revealed on the level of the subject and compositional structure and the image system. The article defines the typology of couplets, the following types are distinguished: representing, evaluating, subject modeling ones. Special attention is given to the play "Figaro from Petersburg", which conforms to poetics of the comic sketch genre in the thematic and structural-semantic scheme. Its relation to comic sketch, emphasized by Leykin in the genre sub-title "joking scenes with couplets in three acts", is confirmed by insertions in the form of couplets which connect subject situations and all stage pointed positions in the play between themselves. Functions of the couplet in the analyzed work are stated as: the means of a hero characteristics, the way of embodying reality of the playwright's time, the mechanism of comic situations construction. Besides couplets, the author of the article has found presence in the structure of "Figaro from Petersburg" such obligatory elements of a comic sketch as the uncomplicated plot based on love-affair, the happy finale, stable types. The author comes to the conclusion that literary process of the last third of the XIX century in the sphere of minor drama forms was characterized by the paradox situation. On the one hand, the plays analyzed in the article succeeded to the comic sketch, absorbing "symbolizing" elements of its poetics. On the other hand, the tendency of disinheriting minor drama genres of comic sketch features was observed. Leykin extended and enriched problems of "joking scenes", introducing into them the themes and motives characteristic of the genre comedy of the last third of the XIX century. Thus, in "Figaro from Petersburg" the playwright shows that in the life contemporary to him not only material values, but sincere feelings have become the things for buying and selling. In the play "In case of insolvency" there is an idea of losing national pride and national originality, of the Russian society cringing to everything foreign.