Memuary Karlo Gol’doni. Soderžanie – istorija ego žizni i ego teatra, t. I. Perevod, vvedenie i primečanija S.S. Mokul’skogo. “Academia”, 1930 g. [P017]

Bio of the Author (original text): Carlo Goldoni (Venice 1707 - Paris 1793). Venetian Enlightenment playwright, reformer of the commedia dell'arte, best known for renouncing masks and developing character comedy. He made his debut on the Venetian stage in 1734, with the popular drama Belisario. His most famous comedies are Il servitore di due padroni, Il cavaliere e la dama, La famiglia dell'antiquario, Le femmine puntigliose, La bottega del caffè, Il bugiardo, I pettegolezzi delle donne, La moglie saggia, Le donne gelose, Le donne curiose, La serva amorosa, La locandiera, Le baruffe chiozzotte. Between 1745 and 1748 he practised as a lawyer in Pisa; in 1748 he returned to Venice. 1749 saw the beginning of Goldoni's fight against the Jesuit abbot Pietro Chiari, and then against Count Carlo Gozzi, a fervent supporter of commedia dell'arte. Gozzi publicly accuses Goldoni of being an incapable and immoral writer and even mocks him in his fables. Exhausted by this conflict, in 1762 Goldoni moved to Paris where he taught Italian to Louis XV's daughter; the French public, accustomed to the improvisation and masks of Italian theatre, did not welcome the reformer benevolently. Goldoni died at the height of the Revolution in poverty, deprived even of his small pension. Goldoni's theatre is characterised by greater realism than the earlier tradition; the comedies are intended for a large, unrefined, often uncultured audience. The language of the characters, which shifts from Italian to Venetian, escapes the literary models in use, revealing itself to be closer to that of the ordinary citizens of the Serenissima; the situations in the comedies are always determined by concrete social contexts (generally typical of the everyday life of the bourgeoisie of the North). Goldoni renounces magical plots and fairy-tale motifs in favour of references to the reality of the present moment, with all the details of simple settings (inn, fishermen's houses, piazza), often considered in the salons of the time as 'low' level. His plays always contain a moral (also made explicit in the author's introductions) and are never intended for pure entertainment; Goldoni hits out at various vices, including hypocrisy, and, while accepting social hierarchies, he praises fidelity to the values of the bourgeois tradition that, according to the author, everyone can follow in their own small way, namely reasonableness, honesty and industriousness.