If it is true that we laugh when external, physical forms that express human actions and aspirations overshadow their inner meaning and significance, which end up being petty or base. Our analysis should begin with the simplest cases of these forms. And the simplest one is this: a laughing person sees primarily a person’s external appearance, that is, literally, his or her body.
Everybody knows that fat men are considered to be funny. Before attempting to explain the cause, we must examine the conditions under which it is true or not. Bergson writes: ‘Any physical incident is comic that calls our attention to the physical in a person, when it is the moral side that is concerned’ (2005, 25; italics original). It is easy to demonstrate that this is not quite the case, that not every manifestation of the physical in a person is funny, even if it is the moral side that is concerned. Some stout men are not funny. Balzac, for example, was notable for his unusual corpulence, but his inner power and the strength of his mind are so evident when we first glance at his whole figure that his corpulence does not seem funny. There is a sculpture by Rodin that represents Balzac nude with a huge stomach and thin legs. This figure is ugly but it does not cause laughter as it was created with unusual talent: the sculptor broke with a tradition dating back to antiquity and eighteenth-century aesthetics that is predisposed to depicting the human body as beautiful. Rodin represented the strength of mind and inner beauty in an ugly body. Some Russian authors and poets – for example, Goncharov and Apukhtin – were noted for their corpulence, but this does not make them at all funny. Laughter does not occur when the mental side dominates the physical. It does not occur in the opposite case either, that is, when our attention is focused entirely on the person’s physical appearance, independently of his or her mental side; for example, when we see a stout man in a doctor’s waiting room. In fact, obesity is either an illness or an anomaly and a stout man suffering from this condition is not funny at all. In this case laughter is impossible because appearance is perceived irrespective of the moral side of the sick person. Hence the comic is to be found not in the person’s physical or moral side but in the combination of the two in which the physical side reveals mental flaws. Stout men are funny when their appearance is perceived as expressing their character. Fat men are not funny in a doctor’s waiting room, nor are stout men with exceptional moral and intellectual strength. Laughter becomes more vigorous if we come across stout men suddenly and unexpectedly. Conversely, portly men whom we are used to seeing, whom we see every day, do not cause laughter.
In the first years of the Russian Revolution, priests, bourgeois, landowners, and policemen were always portrayed as fat men. Corpulence emphasizes the pettiness of those who consider themselves to be social leaders and who imagine that they are superior to everyone else. In this case the comic effect serves satirical purposes. Their paunches are the result of a life of laziness and satiety at the expense of those who have had to work for them and starve. The pleasure experienced from laughter is all the greater because this parasitic behaviour has come to an end. Laughter is an instrument for destroying the imaginary authority and the imaginary greatness of those who are being subjected to ridicule.
Satire, however, can also be different, less blatant and more subtle. Gogol’s gallery of stout men is rather impressive. Ivan Nikiforovich’s corpulence becomes suddenly visible to the reader when he encounters an obstacle, a door, as noted above. Though Chichikov and Manilov are not as stout, they cannot pass through the door simultaneously and their corpulence seems to double in size. They wait for each other to pass through but no one wants to be the first to enter. Bobchinsky and Do-bchinsky are paunchy as well. Pyotr Petrovich Petukh [Russian rooster],1 whom Chichikov on entering his estate sees in the water dragging a fishing net with peasants, comes to mind. He is greatly excited: ‘A man nearly as tall as he was fat, round all around, just like a watermelon. Owing to his fatness he could not possibly drown’ (1997, 303). ‘Oh, he’s so fat!’ Agafya Tikhonovna exclaims in Gogol’s ‘Marriage’ on seeing Pancake (1998, 202). One feature of Gogol’s style is his moderate use of comic devices. His stout men are not very fat, yet this does not undermine the comic effect, on the contrary, it strengthens it.
Everything stated about the comic effect of corpulence can also be said about the comic effect of a naked body under certain conditions. What are these conditions? A naked human body in itself is not funny, and when perfectly shaped it can be beautiful, as demonstrated by all of antique sculpture and innumerable works of art. Just as a stout body is not funny in a doctor’s waiting room, neither is a naked body on an operating table or under a stethoscope. But laughter becomes possible as soon as an undressed person, or even a person in whose attire something is not quite right, appears among properly dressed people who are not preoccupied with their appearance. The cause of laughter here is the same as in the previous cases: the person’s physical side overshadows his or her moral one.
Gogol represents Pyotr Petrovich Petukh not only as a portly man but also as one who appears naked before the reader. Having caught sight of Chichikov’s carriage, he comes out of the water ‘holding one hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun, and the other lower down in the manner of the Medici Venus stepping from her bath’ (1997, 304). Whenever there is an opportunity, the author depicts his characters without any clothes on. Yet even in this instance, Gogol displays his inherent sense of proportion and tact. He never goes as far as pornography, which would not be funny at all; it is semi-indecency that is funny. When Chichikov wakes up in the morning at Korobochka’s, ‘a woman’s face peeked in the door and instantly hid itself, for Chichikov, wishing to sleep better, had thrown off absolutely everything’ (45). Ivan Nikiforovich, too, throws off all his clothes when it is hot and sits naked in a darkened room with shutters closed. ‘Excuse me for appearing before you in my natural state,’ Chichikov says to Ivan Ivanovich as he enters, but Ivan Ivanovich is not flustered and says, ‘Never mind’ (1997, 202). When Nozdryov calls his son-in-law names using the derogatory word ‘fetyuk,’ Gogol provides the following footnote: ‘Fetyuk is an offensive word that originates from (φ,2a letter considered by some to be indecent’ (1984, V:76). Only in rare cases does Gogol’s comic depend on a single cause. In most instances it depends on several. The footnote parodies learned notes in scientific articles. Kozma Prutkov3 uses the same device, and his ‘military aphorisms’ include the following:
The whole of Europe’s trying to guess
How wide is the colonel’s hat.4
And a footnote explains that there is nothing to guess, as ‘for the wrong rhyme it should be given to an auditor5 so that he could look for a different one’ (1974, III). Similar examples of semi-indecency could be given, and it is appropriate now to recall a scene from The Government Inspector that was omitted by Gogol. The non-commissioned officer’s wife complains to Khlestakov about the governor of the town, who had her flogged: ‘Truly! If you don’t believe it, our angel, I’ll rather show you the marks.’ To which Khlestakov replies: ‘No need, Madame, I believe you without it all the same’ (1951, 204).
In light of the above, we can appreciate Chekhov’s mastery in his short story ‘A Daughter of Albion.’ Here, the landowner, Gryabov, is fishing in the company of an Englishwoman, his children’s governess. One of his friends joins him on the bank. Suddenly the hook snags something and he is forced to undress and get into the water to free it. It is impossible to send the Englishwoman away as she does not understand Russian and will not leave.
Gryabov took off his boots and trousers, removed his underwear, and stood there in a state of nature.
‘Must cool down first,’ said Gryabov, slapping his thighs. ‘Do tell me, Fyodor Andreich, why is it I get this rash on my chest every summer?’
‘Oh, hurry up and get into the water, you great brute, or cover yourself with something!’
‘She might at least show some embarrassment, the hussy!’ said Gryabov, getting into the water and crossing himself. ‘Brrrr … this water’s cold.’ (1982, 20)
It is not necessary to dwell on those cases where very tall and lanky or, conversely, very short and stout people are depicted; or on the reasons why these people are funny. The two devices can be combined; for example, the tall and skinny Uncle Mitai looks like a bell tower while the belly of the short, broad-shouldered Uncle Minai is like a samovar. At the governor’s house party, all the guests are divided into those who are stout and those who are slim. It is the stout who get on in life, and when Chichikov takes a liking to the stout, he joins them.
A more detailed examination is required of the comic not only of the human body itself but also of some of its actions and functions. Eating is the most important of these in humorous and satirical literature. From a theoretical point of view, the comic of eating can be explained in the same way as each of the previous cases. The act of eating itself is not comical at all. It comes to be comical under the same circumstances as other comic objects in the situations already examined. Gogol does not miss a single opportunity to describe a meal, the food being often plentiful and heavy. Dishes and meats are sometimes described cursorily, or in great detail, and very often the way people eat characterizes them. In ‘Old World Landowners,’ Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna eat not just at appointed hours but any time, day and night. After coffee they eat flat dry biscuits and ham, papayer turnovers, pickled mushrooms; an hour before dinner Afanasy Ivanovich drinks a glass of vodka with mushrooms or dried fish; etc. All of this, as well as Ukrainian and other foods, characterizes the estate, the way of life, and the mentality of the hosts.
In Dead Souls, Chichikov dines at all the landowners, but at each one differently. At Sobakevich’s, every dish is commented on, and the following are served: shchi, niania (mutton stomach stuffed with buckwheat),6 brains, and a sheep’s foot; rack of lamb with porridge; cheesecakes, each the size of a plate; and a turkey stuffed with eggs, rice, livers, and ‘whatnot else, all of which settled in one lump in the stomach’ (Gogol 1997, 99). The entire dinner characterizes the massive Sobakevich. At thoughtless Nozdryov’s, on the contrary, the dinner is very bad and the wines are sour, whereas at Korobochka’s, the pies are skilfully shaped. At Plyush-kin’s, Chichikov is offered tea with a mouldy rusk and liquor with a fly in it, which is quite in line with the host’s character. After breakfasting at a charitable institution, Khlestakov’s carelessness manifests itself in his words: ‘I do love eating, I must say. But then what’s life for, but to cull the blooms of pleasure’ (The Government Inspector, in Gogol 1998, 283). Bashful Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka is depicted in a different way; earlier, when he was a boy hiding behind a book, a teacher caught him eating an oily pancake. Probably no author in the world described appetites and dishes to the extent Gogol did. Recall how, in The Government Inspector, Osip and later his master demonstrate a voracious appetite, and how Gogol speaks about the appetites of average gentlemen in Dead Souls. When Korobochka came to town in her strange carriage, ‘a chicken pie and a mince meat pie even peeked from the top’ (1997, 178). Pyotr Petrovich Petukh is a dedicated and consummate glutton. Eating and food are his only pleasures in life. As for other Russian authors who described eating in a comical way, Chekhov’s short story ‘Siren,’ where a secretary describes various dishes so temptingly that nobody is able to work, comes to mind.
The causes of the comic of drinking and intoxication are somewhat different from those of eating. Intoxication is funny only when it is not total. Tipsy people are funny but not drunks. When it becomes a vice, heavy drinking can never be funny. Khlestakov, returning from a copious meal but not remembering where he has been, repeating with pleasure the new word ‘labardan,’ is a typical example of the comic of intoxication. Gogol, ridicules more extreme forms of this condition. Experienced coachmen take their drunken owners home and are able to drive horses with one hand and hold their passengers with the other, having turned them backwards. ‘For all his noble breeding, Chertokutsky bowed so low in his calash and swung his head about with such panache, that he arrived home with two thistles in his moustache’ (‘The Carriage,’ in 1998, 153).
A human body can turn out to be funny in certain circumstances, and involuntary physiological functions of the body are almost always funny. ‘The gentleman’s manners had something solid about them, and he blew his nose with an exceeding loudness,’ Gogol (1997, 6) says about Chichikov. ‘The Lawsuit’ begins with a prolonged belch and hiccups by the main character. In his memoirs of Gogol, Aksakov writes about the way the audience reacted to a naturalistic yet artistic imitation of these sounds by the author himself. In ‘Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka,’ Vasilia Kashporovna reminds Shponka of his childhood when he ruined her dress, behaving like all babies do. One of a person’s physical properties consists in the body odour specific to him or her. The odour emanating from Petrushka is with him throughout Dead Souls. The comic of odour is used in other episodes as well. While kissing Feodulia Ivanovna’s hand, Chichikov notices ‘that her hands had been washed in pickling brine’ (95).
Ladies’ perfumes can be used for comical and satirical effects when they clearly betray their intentions. ‘The ladies surrounded him at once in a sparkling garland and brought with them whole clouds of varied fragrances; one breathed roses, another gave off a whiff of spring and violets, a third was perfumed throughout with mignonette; Chich-ikov just kept lifting his nose and sniffing’ (164). A pleasant lady is described in a similar fashion: ‘jasmine wafted through the whole room’ (182). Things are different with men, especially office workers: the office boy and his helper ‘spread such a strong smell with their breath that the office turned for a time into a public house’ (‘The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich,’ in Gogol 1999, 220). All these cases represent the same category of a phenomenon and need not be explained individually.
Several of Gogol’s characters who are extremely anxious about their appearance, and in some instances their bodies, are comical. The reader repeatedly observes how Chichikov shaves: ‘After a short after-dinner nap, he ordered himself a washing and spent an extremely long time rubbing his two cheeks with soap, propping them from inside with his tongue’ (1997, 9). Gogol casually notes that Chichikov is fond of his perfectly round chin; we also see how he tightens his stout stomach with a belt, puts on his suspenders, fastens his tie, and sprays himself with cologne. Similar care is taken by some of Gogol’s other characters. Khles-takov in The Government Inspector is willing to starve rather than sell his trim trousers. Some of the suitors in ‘Marriage’ are especially anxious about their dress. ‘I say, sweetheart, be a dear and brush my coat,’ says Zhevakin, who is always anxious about not having a single speck of dust on his frock, when entering Agafya Tikhonovna’s house (1998, 203).
One of the features of the examples analysed is that a negative phenomenon sometimes is not described completely since if it were it would not be funny. Skilful authors intuitively know the limit when their work stops being artistic. The presence of this limit is characteristic mainly of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, but things are different in the literature of previous centuries (as in Rabelais) and in folklore.
The human face can be comical in a great variety of ways, though eyes cannot be funny as they are the mirrors of the human soul. Malicious eyes as an expression of a soul are not funny because they arouse a feeling of dislike, but small piggy eyes can be. It is not the eyes that are actually funny here but their lack of expression. ‘Oily’ eyes can be comical. ‘His eyes are oily to the point of cloying, so that you would think they are anointed with castor oil’ (‘Without a Job,’ in Chekhov 1974–83, IV:218). The nose, as an expression of purely physical functions, often becomes both an object and a means of ridicule. In popular speech, ‘to wipe someone’s nose,’ ‘to leave somebody with a nose,’ ‘to thumb one’s nose,’ means to deceive, to make a fool of somebody. Gogol uses this extensively. ‘Did you see the long face on him [literally: with what a long nose] as he left?’ Kochkaryov asks Podkolyosin about Zhevakin in ‘Marriage’ (1998, 229). ‘I confess I don’t understand why it’s so arranged that women grab us by the nose as deftly as if it were a teapot handle. Either their hands are made for it, or our noses are no longer good for anything. And despite the fact that Ivan Nikiforovich’s nose somewhat resembled a plum, she (Agafya Fedoseyevna) still grabbed him by that nose and led him around with her like a little dog’ (‘The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich,’ in 1999, 210). The mention of the nose places a person in a funny situation; it causes ridicule. ‘Blockhead! [‘fat-nosed’ in the original],’ the town governor says to himself (The Government Inspector, in 1998, 334). ‘And his nose […] a most disagreeable nose’ (Dead Souls, 1997, 184), a lady says about Chich-ikov. The nose is praised in ‘Marriage’:
‘What sort of hair does he have?’
‘A fine head of hair.’
‘And nose?’
‘Mmm … his nose is good too. Everything is in the right place.’ (1998, 199)
This ‘Mmm’ shows that Kochkaryov is telling a lie here and that the nose actually is imperfect, but it is ‘in the right place.’ The watchman’s figure in ‘The Overcoat’ is comical because of the mention of his nose: ‘while he swiftly reached into his boot for his snuff-box, intending to reanimate his frostbitten nose, which had suffered this fate six times in his life’ (141–2). In ‘Nevsky Prospect,’ the drunken shoemaker, Hoffmann, wants to cut off Schiller’s nose. In ‘The Nose,’ the plot is based on this device. The nose can move and walk along Nevsky Prospect as a State Councilor,7 even though it is only a nose and not a person.
As a form of deceit, pulling one’s nose can stop being funny and become tragic. ‘Diary of a Madman’ ends with a cry from the heart of the unfortunate madman Poprishchin, for whom life is nothing but torment, for whom there is no place on earth, and who is always persecuted. But this tragic cry ends with a madman’s grin: ‘But did you know that the Dey of Algiers8 has a wart right under his nose?’ (Gogol 1999, 300). The devices creating a comic effect are the same as in the other examples, nonetheless no limit is actually needed. Gogol’s laughter has turned its tragic side to us, as I will discuss at length later on. Other Russian authors mention the nose to create a comical or satirical impression much less frequently than Gogol does. In Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Sketches of Provincial Life, in ‘The Clerk’s Assistant’s First Story,’ the author tells us how a district doctor is going to ‘dismember’ a drowned man and invites some peasants to help him. In reality, he only wants to squeeze some money out of them: ‘And you, Grishukha, hold the deceased by his nose so that it will be easier for me to cut.’ The horrified peasant asks to be released. ‘Well, to release, certainly, for a feasible gift’ (1965–77, II:20).
In cheap popular prints, comical figures (e.g., Petrushka) are often depicted with a huge red nose. At the Petrushka theatre [the Russian equivalent of Punch-and-Judy show], a dog unexpectedly snaps at Petrushka’s nose, and the performance ends this way. In a popular print of the period, when Napoleon invades Russia and is soon driven out, he is depicted with a huge nose, sitting in an armchair. The caption runs:
Though I’ve come home naked and barefooted,
I’ve brought with me the biggest nose.
A huge nose is very often found in cheap popular prints as well as in chastooshkas:9
My wife is a beauty:
Ruddiness under her nose,
Snot across her cheek. (Satira 1960, 322)
When a moustache or beard hides all the moral features of a face, they can serve as a target for ridicule. ‘Beard’ was a derisive nickname for merchants and boyars. ‘I shan’t, I shan’t!’ Agafya Tikhonovna says about the suitor proposed to her by the matchmaker. ‘He has a beard: when he eats, the food all spills down his beard. No, no, I shan’t’ (‘Marriage,’ in Gogol 1998, 197). Even so, a mouth can appear funny if it reveals some hidden bad feelings, or if a person cannot control it.