Thus far, we have examined cases in which the comic evolves from a correspondence of some inner intellectual or mental qualities with the external forms of their manifestation. This involved revealing the negative qualities of the person being portrayed or studied as they relate to his or her inner and external features. A different kind of comparison is also possible: the object to be compared is taken from the world around us. In comic and satiric literature, as well as in art, humans are more often compared to animals or to objects, which also causes laughter. Making a human similar to an animal or comparing him or her to one does not always cause laughter but does so under certain conditions. Some animals’ looks and appearance remind us of certain negative qualities in people. Therefore, showing a person as a pig, a monkey, a crow, or a bear accentuates his or her corresponding negative qualities. Comparing humans to animals with no negative qualities (falcons, swans, nightingales) does not. Hence the conclusion: only animals with some negative qualities attributed to them, resembling the same qualities in people, are suitable for humorous and satirical comparisons. Both in real life and in literary works, giving a person an animal’s name is the most common form of comical curse. ‘Pig,’ ‘donkey,’ ‘camel,’ ‘magpie,’ ‘snake,’ etc., are the usual insults that make the audience laugh. Many varied and unexpected associations are possible. ‘A diligent doctor is like a pelican’ (Prutkov 1974, 125); ‘Any dandy is like a wagtail’ (136); these are just two of Kozma Prutkov’s aphorisms. ‘Old Hag! I only keep the codfish because of the children,’ the landowner says about the English governess in Chekhov’s (1982, 20) ‘A Daughter of Albion.’ ‘There are no real women nowadays but only, God forgive me, wagtails and sprats all the way,’ a character says in ‘In a Boarding House’ (Chekhov 1974–82, V:150). A comparison to an animal is comical only when it is used to expose a flaw. If this is not the case, then this type of comparison not only fails to insult but can even serve as a manifestation of praise or endearment. In folk poetry, a bright falcon is the symbol of a good fellow and a cuckoo of a wistful girl. A young woman who is unhappy in her marriage wants to turn into a little bird and fly home, etc. In private life, for example, names like ‘kitty,’ ‘canary,’ ‘little rabbit,’ and others, express endearment.
Gogol’s work is extremely rich and varied. A distinctive feature of his style is that his characters are never explicitly portrayed as animals (as happens, for example, in fables); they only remind us of them in a variety of ways by becoming similar to them. The device of portraying a person so that the figure of an animal appears through his human form is consistently applied to the description of Sobakevich, who is likened to a bear: ‘When Chichikov glanced sidelong at Sobakevich, it seemed to him this time that he looked exactly like a medium-sized bear’ (1997, 93). He is clumsy, shuffles, and wears a brown tailcoat, and his name is Mikhailo (associated with a bear in Russian and Ukrainian folklore) Semyonovich. It is not just him but the entire setting around him that has something bear-like about it: ‘Everything […] bore some strange resemblance to the master of the house himself; in the corner of the drawing room stood a big-bellied walnut bureau on four most preposterous legs, a veritable bear’ (95).
In ‘Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka,’ Vasilisa Kashporovna wants to marry off her nephew. He imagines himself already married in his dream, which turns into a nightmare: ‘It’s strange to him; he doesn’t know how to approach her, what to say to her, and he notices that she has a goose face.’ Then he ‘sees another wife, also with a goose face’ (Gogol 1999, 130). Comparing a person to an animal is more often done in passing; as a result, the comic does not wane, on the contrary, it increases. In The Government Inspector, Khlestakov imagines how he will ride home wearing his metropolitan attire to see his rude neighbours and asks through his footman: ‘“Is Your Lordship receiving?” The louts, they don’t even know what “receiving” means. If some cloddish landowner goes visiting round there, he barges straight into the drawing-room, like a bear’ (1998, 268). In the boasting scene, Khlestakov says: ‘and the copy clerk, such an office rat, scratches away, tr, tr […]’ (286). On the other hand, the town governor says this about Khlestakov: ‘but in a tailcoat, he looks like a fly with its wings clipped’ (291). Khlestakov’s letter to Tryapi-chkin states: ‘Superintendent of charitable institutions, one Zemlyanika, looks like a pig in a skull-cap’; ‘the mayor1 […] stupid as a cart horse’ (331–2).
In all these cases, man is reduced to the level of an animal, but we can find the opposite in Gogol’s works: an animal becomes a man. Korobo-chka’s dogs bark with every possible voice, and Gogol describes this as a concert in which the tenors especially stand out. Nozdryov’s dogs behave unceremoniously in the presence of people: ‘They all shot up their tails, which dog fanciers call sweeps, flew straight to meet the guests, and began to greet them.’ This greeting is such that ‘a good ten of them put their paws on Nozdryov’s shoulders’ (1997, 72). One of them, Obrugai [from the Russian Scold!], licks Chichikov right on the lips instead of a kiss. Representing animals as men sometimes is pushed to the point of absurdity, and this nonsense strengthens the impression of the comic. In ‘Diary of a Madman,’ the incredible is justified because the world is shown through the prism of a madman’s perception: ‘I also read in the papers about two cows which went into a shop and asked for a pound of tea’ (1998, 16). The correspondence between two dogs, Madgie and Fidèle, is depicted as real and as having actually taken place. It is a satire on the upper classes and the range of their interests. Though he longs to do so, Poprishchin cannot penetrate their circle. Not only social flaws, but also human feelings – for example, love – have been ridiculed: ‘Ah, my dear, how one can feel the approach of spring. My heart is already beating in expectation of something’ (168). These words have a poetic sense, but they take on a very different shade in the canine world. The fact that Gogol alternates social with personal and psychological satire does not diminish the satirical dimension of his creative work; on the contrary, continuous social satire, without any layers of what is plainly comical, would create monotony and an impression of a didactic bias that would be boring for the reader.
In Russian satire and humour, comparing people to animals does not occur very often. Many satirical magazines have or used to have titles that were taken from the animal world: ‘Hippopotamus,’ ‘Rhinoceros,’ ‘Crocodile,’ ‘Hedgehog,’ ‘Ruff,’ ‘Bug,’ ‘Gnat,’ ‘Wasp,’ ‘Scorpion,’ ‘Bumblebee’ ‘Mosquito,’ ‘Rat-Crusher,’ and many others. In each individual case, it is possible to explain why a certain name was chosen.
Animals play a special role in fables and folktales. When reading Kry-lov’s fables, one can see that an animal sometimes causes laughter and sometimes does not. Animals are not ridiculous in, for example, the fables ‘A Wolf and a Lamb,’ ‘A Lion and a Mouse,’ and ‘A Wolf in a Kennel.’ Allegory is a specific property of fables in which animals are regarded as people and in itself is not enough to cause laughter. But when we read the fables ‘A Monkey and Glasses,’ ‘A Frog and an Ox,’ ‘The Quartet,’ and many others, we find them funny. In the image of a restless monkey, a frog puffed up with arrogance, a stupid monkey, a donkey, a goat, and a bear, we easily recognize people with their various flaws. See the fables ‘A Wolf and a Lamb,’ ‘A Lion and a Mouse,’ and others. But while horrifying flaws are depicted in the latter fable, minor ones are shown in the former: a wolf, devouring an innocent lamb, is not funny but repugnant.
A different relation between people and animals exists in folktales. The view that in them animals are regarded as people the way they are in fables2 is very widespread. This is surely a mistake, because unlike a fable, a folktale is devoid of allegory. In folktales, animals’ habits and character differences make them resemble people, provoking a smile, but animals do not represent people completely as they do in fables. Folktales about animals as a genre have no satirical intent. They do not serve the purposes of ridicule and do not embody human flaws. The attitude towards animals in these tales can be endearing; they are given diminu-five names with endearment: ‘little rabbit,’ ‘cockerel,’ ‘little hedgehog,’ ‘little lamb.’ Even the cunning fox is named ‘little sister fox.’ The wolf, a negative character in many folktales, can elicit a sneer, but in this case it is caused not by the animal’s image (the wolf is not comical) but rather by the plot. In the folktale about a wolf and a fox, the silly wolf, following the crafty advice of the fox, crouches and lowers its tail in a hole in the ice. When its tail freezes and it is attacked by people, it tears it off and escapes. Here it is not the wolf’s image that is comical but the action, the plot. The comic of action will be discussed in a later chapter.
Folktales about animals serve no satirical purposes. When satire is present in a folktale, it turns out that the folktale has some literary origin. There are only two such tales in Russian folklore: one about Mr Ruff Ruffovich and the other about the confessor fox. Neither of these originated in folklore; they were passed on through literature.3 Ruff’s tale comes from a seventeenth-century satire on legal proceedings in Moscow; the one about the confessor fox comes from a satire on the clergy.
When people strive to paint the world satirically in their tales, they do not resort to images of animals but instead sketch priests and landowners. Mummery has no satirical intent either, for during Christmastide, and also sometimes Eastertide, people dress up as animals and wear animal masks and skins (e.g., a bear, a crane, or a goat). People disguised as animals play the fool, and the indulgent spectators laugh uproariously. The long neck of a crane, the clumsy gestures of a bear, the bleating of a goat all cause cheerful laughter in the audience. This is a different kind of laughter (which will be examined later), for any ridicule that occurs is quite harmless and good-natured.
In the examples above, a human portrays an animal; though the opposite is also possible, and the comic of trained animals is based on this. An elephant smears soapsuds on his master’s face to shave him; a bear rides a bicycle; a dog dances on its hind legs or howls to the accompaniment of a mandolin, like Chekhov’s Kashtanka does. Perceptions of animal behaviour were prevalent even in ancient Greece, and Aristophanes named a number of his comedies after them: ‘Birds,’ ‘Wasps,’ ‘Frogs.’ Animals act in those plays instead of people, and this amuses spectators even today. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s folktale ‘The Eagle – Patron of Art’ proves the vitality of the principles employed by Aristophanes. The Eagle establishes a landowner’s paradise for himself by making all the birds serve him: ‘A brass band was put together from land rails and divers; parrots were dressed up as buffoons; keys from the treasury were entrusted to the magpie – even though it still was a thief; horned owls and eagle-owls were made flying night watchmen’ (1965–77, XVI[1]:73). Even an academy of sciences is established among the birds, but this undertaking fails as everyone eventually turns against each other and everything breaks down. Saltykov-Shchedrin repeatedly used animal characters (the wise gudgeon, the self-denying hare, the dried vobla,4 etc.) in his tales; all were allegorical and satirical, which differentiated them from folktales. It would be a mistake to say that in some respects Saltykov-Shche-drin’s work resembles folklore even though it has something in common with seventeenth-century satirical tales. In Modern Idyll (ch. 24) there is a scene titled ‘The Well-Fated Gudgeon, or the Drama at the Kashino People’s Court of Justice’ that in many respects resembles ‘The Story Mr Ruff Ruffovich Senetinnikov’s Son’ (or ‘The Bream vs Ruff Case’). The material just analysed shows why comparing a human to an animal can be comical.