Why do I exaggerate when I talk about myself?
It rarely starts as a lie. A story gets a slightly better ending. A job sounds a little more important. A number grows by a third. Nobody decided to do it, and afterwards it is hard to say when it began. Often there is only a vague sense of having said more than was true, and of having enjoyed it.
Nikolai Gogol wrote a comedy about a man who does this in front of an entire town. It is called "The Inspector-General".
A clerk mistaken for someone else
Khlestakov is a minor government clerk with no money, stuck at a provincial inn. The officials of the town take him for an inspector sent secretly from the capital. They are frightened. They bring him to the Governor's house, feed him well and listen to every word.
In the third act he starts to talk about his life in Petersburg. He gives balls. He plays cards with ambassadors. Princes wait in his hall before he wakes. The Minister himself comes to see him. None of it is prepared. He finds each detail as he goes.
Gogol puts one stage direction in the middle of this speech:
"The Governor and the rest tremble with fright. Khlestakov works himself up more and more as he speaks."
— Nikolai Gogol, "The Inspector-General", Act III, tr. Thomas Seltzer
The two sentences stand side by side. The listeners tremble, and he grows. Their fear is the fuel. A few lines earlier he even catches himself, admits he forgot that he lives on the first floor, and goes straight on.
Two people make an exaggeration
It is tempting to read Khlestakov as a liar, someone else entirely. Gogol shows something less comfortable. Alone at the inn, hungry and unpaid, Khlestakov does not invent a thing. He becomes grand only when someone looks at him with awe. The officials want an important man, because an important man explains their fear. He gives them one.
An exaggeration of this kind is made by two people. One speaks, the other leans in, and the leaning in asks for more. It is close to the old question of why someone is different with different people: some listeners call out a larger self than others do.
What the play leaves
Gogol does not punish Khlestakov. He simply drives away before the real inspector arrives. The play keeps its eye on the room: what the listeners needed, and what the speaker got from them. The question it leaves is in front of whom I become bigger, and what they give me for it.
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.