We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
290
CLOSE UP
To be able, on the strength of a casual indication, to picture a person to one's self and give a detailed account of his personality, tastes and environment— that is what we expect of a regisseur.
And here Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol comes to our aid.
If one is working at comedy, it is impossible to avoid Gogol.
When I was working at comedy, I could not get awav from Gogol, and, when I was rummaging among the material, I chanced upon the following extract from the reminiscences of Obolensky : —
"... Towards morning we stopped at a station to have some tea. ... At the station I found a Complaints Book, and in it I read a rather ridiculous complaint bv some gentleman. When Gogol had heard it, he asked me
" ' And what sort of a individual do you imagine he was? What were his qualities and character?'
" ' I'm sure I don't know,' I answered.
" ' Well then, I'll tell you.' And thereupon he embarked upon a most amusing and original description of the outward appearance of this gentleman, followed by an account of his official career and of certain episodes in his life. I remember that I laughed as if I were crazy, but he kept an absolutely serious face the whole time. After that he told me how, when he was living with N. M. Yazykov, the poet, they used to amuse themselves in the evenings, when thev went to bed, b}^ describing various characters and then inventing for each character a suitable surname. ' The results were very comic,' Gogol observed, and then he described to me one character on whom he quite unexpectedly bestowed a surname which it would be indecent to mention in print — ' and he was a Greek by birth ' — Gogol concluded his story." {Old-Time Russia, 1873.)
In the arsenal of weapons for our examination was included the Complaints Book. We availed ourselves of Anton Chekhov's short story entitled The Complaints Book.
Deacon Dukhov ; the clerk, Samoluchshev, whose wife has been insulted ; Ivanov the seventh', who, though he is the seventh, is a fool ; the telegraph operator, dismissed for drunkenness; the anonymous writer, who has watched the gendarme's wife flirting with some man and writes sarcastically — " Don't grieve, gendarme "... In all their variety, these individuals begin to stride through the hall of GIK, where the examinations are conducted.
We get to know a number of incredible things about their appearance, baggage, family circumstances, purposes of the journey, boots and headgear.
But we get to know much more about the peculiarities in the workings of the minds of those to whom we propound indecorous questions about these figures of long ago.
We also apply the converse method.
On the wall hangs a poster on which are depicted a numbers of workers,