concept
The incognito inspector
incognito inspector
also: инкогнито, traveling incognito
A stock plot device of Russian satire -- a government official traveling in disguise to surprise corrupt provincials -- best known from Gogol's The Government Inspector; here Chekhov inverts the joke, since Posudin's incognito is transparent to everyone he meets, from his own driver to the telegraph office, well before he arrives.
Reading notes
- Murder Will Out (You Can't Hide an Awl in a Sack) §2 strictest incognito
The premise -- a government official traveling in secret to catch a provincial town in the act of corruption -- is the stock plot of Russian bureaucratic satire, most famously Gogol's The Government Inspector. Chekhov signals from the first sentence that he is working this well-worn trope, then spends the rest of the story dismantling it: everyone already knows who Posudin is.
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