ragedy, Russian despotism, the despotism that gives
the sharp edge to official corruption. For there is no possible redress
from it except in violent revolutions.

That is the prime reason why the Inspector-General, a mere comedy, has
such a hold on the Russian people and occupies so important a place
in Russian literature. And that is why a Russian critic says, "Russia
possesses only one comedy, the Inspector-General."

The second reason is the brilliancy and originality with which this
national theme was executed. Gogol was above all else the artist. He was
not a radical, nor even a liberal. He was strictly conservative. While
hating the bureaucracy, yet he never found fault with the system
itself or with the autocracy. Like most born artists, he was strongly
individualistic in temperament, and his satire and ridicule were aimed
not at causes, but at effects. Let but the individuals act morally, and
the system, which Gogol never questioned, would work beautifully. This
conception caused Gogol to concentrate his best efforts upon delineation
of character. It was the characters that were to be revealed, their
actions to be held up to scorn and ridicule, not the conditions which
created the characters and made them act as they did. If any lesson at
all was to be drawn from the play it was not a sociological lesson, but
a moral one. The individual who sees himself mirrored in it may be moved
to self-purgation; society has nothing to learn from it.

Yet the play lives because of the social message it carries. The
creation proved greater than the creator. The author of the Revizor was
a poor critic of his own work. The Russian people rejected his
estimate and put their own upon it. They knew their officials and they
entertained no illusions concerning their regeneration so long as the
system that bred them continued to live. Nevertheless, as a keen satire
and a striking exposition of the workings of the hated system itself,
they hailed the Revizor with delight. And as such it has remained graven
in Russia's conscience to this day.

It must be said that "Gogol himself grew with the writing of the
Revizor." Always a careful craftsman, scarcely ever satisfied with the
first version of a story or a play, continually changing and rewriting,
he seems to have bestowed special attention on perfecting this comedy.
The subject, like that of Dead Souls, was suggested to him by the poet
Pushkin, and was based on a true incident. Pus