English Reception of Nikolai Gogol's Comedy The Government Inspector in Theatrical Translation Interpretation by Peter Raby and Michael Langham

The article deals with the adapted translation of the comedy The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol made in 1967 for production in Canada (and then in America). The aim of the study is to examine the “theatrical translation interpretation” of the play, i.e., the interpretation that the play receives as a result of a translation prepared specifically for the stage, its reception in the context of the host culture, of work on it by the author of the adaptation, and by the director when embodying the text on stage. The research methodology is based on the biographical method, content analysis, contextual analysis, as well as the comparative method. The relevance of Gogol's play to the inhabitants of Canada could partly be explained by the narrow-minded provincialism of Canadian society. Canada could also be influenced by a similar situation in America, where rebellious sentiments were growing due to the dominance of bourgeois values that depersonalize a person, due to the cult of things and philistine “happiness”. This led to the predominance of modernist sentiments in American society: to pessimism and the desire of young people to leave for other realities. In Canadian literature, surrealist tendencies were beginning to intensify at this time. Presumably, it was the cultural environment that influenced the authors' interpretation of all the characters as suffering escapists who seek to hide from the ugly reality in dreams of an idealized life. The heroes' values, according to Raby and Langham, make them victims of “poshlost' ”, behind which there is a fear of reality. “Poshlost' ”, on the other hand, is the product of bourgeois values that depersonalize people. The reality of the comedy is interpreted as dreamlike, which indicates a surreal aesthetic, but the essence of the play is seen by the creators of the production in those moments when reality manages to break through. Here, there is a similarity with the “Theater of Cruelty” conception by A. Artaud. The exposure of everyday reality in order to overcome the “fear of life” and the “poshlost' ” that binds people's souls can be considered as the sense of adaptation. Undoubtedly, the audience does not get the opportunity to meet the “terrible reality” in full, but the appeal of the Mayor partly makes them participants of the events, and, therefore, understanding the horror of “poshlost' ” is still possible. It can also be noted that the structure of the play is somewhat transformed in the adaptation: it becomes more chaotic and simplified, which presumably correlates with the state of the 20th-century culture. This interpretation reveals the meanings that potentially exist in comedy, and can serve as an illustration of why Gogol's works do not lose their relevance.

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