An overview of existing theories of the comic gives a somewhat depressing picture of the state of affairs. The question that arises here is this: do we need any theory at all? A certain number of theories have appeared over the years; is it worth adding one more to those that already exist? Maybe this new theory would be a simple mental exercise, a form of lifeless scholasticism; a philosopheme1 of no use in real life. At first glance, scepticism seems to be justified as the greatest humorists and satirists did quite well without theory. Modern professional humorists and writers, along with theatre, variety show, and circus people, also manage without it. This does not mean that there is no need for theory, which is required in all areas of human knowledge. Today science cannot ignore theory, which has primarily a cognitive significance, and knowledge of it is one of the elements of a scientific view in general.
The first and main drawback of existing theories (especially German) is that they are terribly abstract and formal and are created regardless of whether they correspond to any form of reality. In most cases they are really lifeless philosophemes that are expounded so ponderously that it is sometimes impossible to understand them. These works consist of endless ratiocination, sometimes an entire page or even dozens of them contain no data whatsoever. When they occasionally appear, the data illustrate abstract theses and the only thesis selected is the one that seems to corroborate the data, while nothing is said about the rest, which the authors ignore. The relation of theory to data has to be dealt with differently, and a strict and impartial study of them should form the basis of our analysis rather than abstract ideas, however telling and attractive they happen to be.
Method can be of crucial importance to any research. In the past, when scholars dealt with the relation of theory to data, their method usually meant that the comic was predetermined within the framework of their philosophical systems. Scholars began with specific hypotheses and then selected examples that were supposed to illustrate and prove them. This is usually referred to as the deductive method. It can be justified in cases where data are lacking or when they cannot be observed directly or explained otherwise. All the same there exists another method, one that begins with a meticulous comparative study and analysis of data and then leads to conclusions based on them, which is usually referred to as the inductive method. Science can no longer be founded on the mere creation of hypotheses, and the inductive method should be used wherever the data warrant it; this is how truth is established.
First of all, it was necessary to collect and systematize the material without rejecting or selecting anything. Everything that causes laughter or a smile, everything that is in any way linked to the comic, had to be noted. The study presented here is basically a work of literary criticism, as I have primarily studied the works of authors. I began with the most striking and successful examples of humour and the comic, but also had to examine weaker and less successful ones. Initially, I studied the Russian classics, and Gogol’s works proved to be the most important source of the comic. He2 appeared to me to be the greatest humorist and satirist of all time, greatly surpassing all the others, Russian and non-Russian masters alike. Therefore the reader should not be surprised that so many examples are taken from his work. Even so, I could not limit myself to Gogol and examined the works of other past and contemporary authors; I also considered folk literature and folklore. In some cases the humour of folklore has specific features that differentiate it from the humour of literary writers, and it often provides highly individual and revealing material that cannot be ignored. In order to deal with the comic, however, I could not limit myself to classical works and the best examples from folklore. It was necessary to glean current examples from comic and satirical magazines as well as newspapers, magazines, and the press that reflect present-day life. These examples too need to be subjected to the same thorough examination as literature and folklore. Not only literary works but also the circus, variety shows, and comic films had to be taken into account, as well as conversations that took place in different situations …
Theorists will notice that the data have not been classified into aesthetic and non-aesthetic categories. The relation of aesthetic phenomena to the phenomena of life was examined only after the material was studied. The inductive method, which is based on processing available data, makes it possible to avoid abstraction and the conclusions so typical of most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century works on aesthetics. Later on I examine the types of laughter and how they can be classified. (See chapter 2 of this volume.) It is quite evident that it is neither feasible nor necessary to show the entire corpus of material analysed in this work, as the series of cases examined need only to be illustrated by selected examples. This is similar to the procedures followed in the past. However, from a research perspective the method used here is very different. Examples show from which data and from which sources my conclusions have been drawn. Abstractness is not the only shortcoming of existing theories. Other inadequacies must be understood so that they can be avoided. Another shortcoming is that the main principles of these theories have been adopted from predecessors, taken on trust without being subjected to preliminary questioning. An example of this is when the comic is opposed to the tragic and the sublime, and the conclusions drawn from studying the latter are reversed when applied to the former.
When he defined comedy, it was sensible for Aristotle to begin with tragedy as its opposite, since tragedy was more important from the perspective of the experience and the consciousness of the inhabitants of ancient Greece, but this contrastive method, when continued into the aesthetics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, became lifeless and abstract. For the aesthetics of romantic idealism, it was natural to base any aesthetic theory on a doctrine of the sublime and the beautiful and to contrast it with the comic as something low, its very opposite. Belinsky3 raised an objection to this type of interpretation when he used Gogol as an example and showed the great value the comic can have in both art and social life; however, his initiative was never taken up. That the comic is the opposite of the sublime and the tragic is an assumption taken on trust but doubts about the adequacy of this sort of opposition were already expressed in nineteenth-century positivistic German aesthetics. For example, Volkelt4 wrote: ‘In the domain of aesthetics, the comic is identified from a point of view completely different from the tragic’; ‘The comic is not an opposite category of the tragic, and it cannot be placed on the same level as it […] If anything is opposed to the comic, it is the non-comic or the serious’ (341–3). He states the same thing about the sublime. This notion, expressed also by others, is undeniably correct and fruitful. The comic should be studied primarily in itself; for we can ask: What makes the amusing short stories by Boccaccio, or ‘The Carriage’ by Gogol, or ‘A Horsy Name’ by Chekhov,5 the opposite of the tragic? They simply bear no relation to it as they are beyond its sphere. Cases do exist, however, where works comical in their interpretation and style have a tragic content. Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman’ and ‘The Overcoat’ are examples. Opposing the tragic to the sublime does not reveal the nature and the specificity of the comic, which is my aim. I will define the comic without any reference to the tragic or the sublime, and will thereby try to understand and define it as such. Cases where the comic is somehow linked to the tragic should be considered but they should not be the starting point.
Failure to understand the specificity of the comic is the next, almost persistent shortcoming of most treatises dealing with this topic. People’s flaws, for example, are said to be comical, yet it is quite evident they can also not be, and it is therefore necessary to determine which flaws can be funny, under what circumstances, and in which cases they can be funny or not. This requirement can be generalized: when examining any fact or any case that causes laughter, questions should be raised as to the specific or non-specific character of the phenomenon, along with its causes. This question was sometimes asked in the past, but it was neglected in the majority of studies. An example has already been given about how definitions of the comic ended up being too broad, since non-comical phenomena matched them as well. The greatest philosophers made this mistake; for example, Schopenhauer,6 who stated that laughter arises when we suddenly discover that real objects in the world around us do not conform to our conceptions and ideas about them. He apparently imagined a number of cases where this kind of discrepancy caused laughter. He does not say that such a discrepancy can also fail to be funny. When, for example, scholars make a discovery that completely changes their idea about the object of their studies, when they see that they have been mistaken, the discovery of this error (discrepancy between the world around us and our ideas) is outside the domain of the comic. There is no need to give other examples, which leads me to the following methodological postulate: In each and every case one must specify the nature of the comic and see to what extent and under what circumstances the same phenomenon can or cannot be comical.
Other pitfalls should be avoided. When we compare works on aesthetics, it is possible to see how the idea that the comic might be based on the discrepancy between form and content, oscillates from one pole to the other. The problem of form and content should certainly be raised, but it can be solved only after studying the data, not before. Having examined the source materials, this issue must revisited in order to gain some understanding of the muddle that until recently was so characteristic of aesthetics. Only in light of the data, rather than through preconceived notions, will it be possible to decide whether a particular discrepancy actually underlies the comic. And if it happens to do so, we must find out whether it is actually a discrepancy between form and content, or something else.
So far a single issue has been addressed, namely, defining the nature of the comic, which is the most important but hardly the only issue, as many others are associated with laughter and the comic. I would like to single out and study one of them, but it is necessary to examine the methodology before delving into the material. The important hypothesis that there are two different, opposite types of comic, which has not been raised until now, must be analysed first. Many bourgeois aesthetic theories maintain that there are two types of comic: the high and the low. The comic is defined mainly in negative terms as something low, insignificant, infinitesimal, material. It is the body, the letter, the form, low principles. It is also the discrepancy, opposition, contrast, antagonism, and contradiction with the sublime, the great, the high-principled, etc. The negative epithets applied to the idea of the comic, contrasting it to the sublime, high, beautiful, high-principled, etc., demonstrate a negative attitude towards laughter and the comic, even some contempt for it, which is strikingly evident in the studies of idealist philosophers – Schopenhauer, Hegel, Vischer, and others. No theory of the two types of comic appears in their works, only a somewhat disdainful attitude towards the comic itself. The theory of low and high comic emerges in nineteenth-century poetics, which quite often maintain that the entire domain of the comic does not constitute something low, but there seem to be two types of comic: one that falls under aesthetics understood as the study of the beautiful, and the other a different sort of comic outside aesthetics and the beautiful and regarded as low.
There are usually no theoretical definitions of what is generally referred to as ‘low comic,’ and even when attempts at a definition are made they turn out to be quite useless. Kirchmann7 strongly supported such a theory, dividing the entire domain of the comic into ‘refined’ and ‘crude.’ According to his theory, the comic is always caused by some unreasonable, absurd action. ‘If this absurdity is present to a great extent […] then the comic is crude, if the absurdity is more concealed […] then the comic is refined’ (1868, II:46–7). The lack of logic and consistency in this definition is obvious since all we find is some vague gradation instead of defined borders. ‘Crude’ comic is often not defined at all; instead only examples are given. Volkelt (1905–14, I) includes everything connected with the human body and its functions, that is, ‘gluttony, heavy drinking, sweating, spitting, belching […] everything that concerns urination and defecation,’ etc. He does not see the differences between the instances when this is comical or not. According to Volkelt this type of comic is predominantly a characteristic of folk literature, and it appears in the works of many authors. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are quite rich in this type: ‘As a matter of fact, one must take into consideration that Shakespeare more than any other poet combines bestial dissipation with humour-packed dissoluteness’ (409–10). On the other hand, he considers Scribe’s A Glass of Water an example of a graceful and refined comedy, admiring the witty and subtle dialogue between Duke Bolingbroke and the Duchess of Marlborough, which provokes a faint smile rather than coarse laughter.
Other theorists define ‘low comic’ in terms of its forms and include in this category all kinds of farces, buffooneries, clowneries, etc. In his book on humour, Stephen Leacock (1916, 311) writes: ‘One thinks here not of the mere spasmodic effects of the comic artist or the blackface expert of the vaudeville show, but of the really great humour which, once or twice in a generation at best, illuminates and elevates our literature.’ Farcical elements – red noses, big bellies, verbal quirks, fights and brawls, trickeries, etc. – are mostly subsumed under the category of ‘low’ or ‘superficial’ comic.
Is it possible to adhere to this type of theory, and organize and study the material along these principles? My analysis will not be grounded in this theory, since a significant part of our classical heritage would have to be rejected as ‘low comic.’ When examining classic comedies identified as ‘high’ comic, we can easily see that elements of farce permeate all the classics of comedy. Aristophanes’ comedies are acutely political, though apparently they should be subsumed under the domain of the ‘crude,’ the ‘low,’ or, as it is sometimes called, the ‘superficial’ comic. However, on closer examination, both Molière and Gogol along with all the classics will have to be subsumed under it. Is it a form of higher or lower comic when, while kissing Marya Antonovna’s hand, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky in Gogol’s The Government Inspector bump each other’s foreheads? It turns out that Gogol’s creative art is thoroughly contaminated with ‘low’ or ‘crude’ comic. Contemporaries and even more recent authors who failed to understand all the significance of Gogol’s humour accused him of vulgarity. Some scholars and literary historians were shocked by the improprieties in his works. Mandelstam8 (1902), who authored an important paper on Gogol’s style, is one of them. He believes that the artistic value of ‘Marriage’ would have been greater had Gogol removed the following words: ‘Is there a whit of sense in that head of yours? Or are you a complete numbskull? […] Tell me something: after this are you not … a complete swine?’ (1998, 195). ‘These words,’ he writes, ‘are intended for buffoonery’ (53). According to Mandelstam, Gogol should have expunged these sorts of ‘excesses’ from his texts because the inordinate number of different curses in them jars on the well-mannered professor’s nerves.
Social differentiation is another element introduced into the theory of refined and crude comic: the refined type exists for educated minds, aristocrats both in spirit and by birth, whereas the crude characterizes the plebians, the rabble, and the mob. E. Beyer (1882, I-II:106) writes: ‘Low comic is appropriate in folk plays (Volksstücke) where notions of decency, tact, and civilized behaviour have broader limits.’ Describing the very wide prevalence of the crude type, he notes that ‘every connoisseur of folk literature knows about it,’ and then refers to German folk literature, to folk puppet shows, to some folktales, etc. (409). Such statements, which occur repeatedly in German aesthetics, are symptomatic: contempt for jesters, buffoons, and clowns and for all kinds of unrestrained fun corresponds to contempt for folk sources and forms of laughter. This issue was dealt with very differently by Pushkin9 when he made a case for ‘in the public square’ amusement: ‘Drama was born in the public square and was part of the people’s amusement’ (1974–78, VI:317). Chernyshevsky10 also pointed to the special nature of popular humour and showed no contempt for it. ‘A true realm of the farce,’ he says, ‘is the common people’s game; for example, our buffoon-shows. Great authors do not disregard farce either: it definitely permeates Rabelais’ works, and it also occurs very frequently in Cervantes’ (1974, IV:189).
Nobody will deny the existence of stale and rude jokes, vulgar farces, doubtful anecdotes, frivolous vaudevilles, and silly ridiculing. Low humour is present in all areas of verbal art, and when examining the material it is virtually impossible to divide the comic into crude and refined. My analysis will therefore not take this theory into account; yet after studying the data it will be necessary to raise the issue of artistic and moral values or, conversely, of the detrimental effect of certain forms of the comic. This is a rather topical issue that requires a detailed and well-grounded approach. Methodologically, it must be dealt with, along with other major issues, only after studying the data.
A difficult and contentious problem in aesthetics is the question of the aesthetic or extra-aesthetic nature of the comic, which is frequently linked to the issue of ‘lower,’ ‘elementary,’ or ‘superficial’ forms versus higher forms. The so-called ‘superficial’ or ‘low’ forms of comic are usually not subsumed under the domain of aesthetics as they are considered to be an extra-aesthetic category. The weakness of this theory becomes evident when we think back on Aristophanes or farcical situations in classic works. Any laughter outside the boundaries of works of art is considered an extra-aesthetic category as well. Formally this may be true but, as was already noted, an aesthetics that separates itself from life will inevitably be too abstract to suit the purposes of actual cognition.
In many cases, terminology is developed to distinguish between the aesthetic (‘higher’) category of the comic and the extra-aesthetic (‘lower’) one. In some cases ‘the comical’ [komicheskoye]11 is mentioned, in others ‘the funny’ [smeshnoye]. I will not make this distinction; or rather, the data should show us whether this kind of distinction is correct or not. ‘The comical’ and ‘the funny’ will be combined under a single term and notion, ‘the comic’ [komizm], since for me these words signify the same thing. This does not mean that ‘the comic’ is something completely uniform. Different kinds of the comic result in different kinds of laughter, which will be my particular focus.