Representing a person as a thing is comical for the same reasons and under the same conditions as portraying him or her as an animal: ‘You blathering magpies,’ ‘nightcap,’ ‘potbellied toadstools’ (The Government Inspector, in Gogol 1998, 335). It is with these and other words that the town governor rails at Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky. Animals (magpies) and objects (nightcap, toadstools) are mentioned in the same breath.
In Ostrovsky’s Talents and Admirers, the old actor Narokov says this about the entrepreneur: ‘A tree he is, a tree, an oak, a beast’ (1973–80, V, 237). Similarly, ‘You ninny!’ (1998, 4) (‘bedside-table’ in the original) is what the fiancée’s father says to his wife in Chekhov’s ‘A Blunder’ when, in order to bless the young couple, she hurriedly takes the portrait of the author Lazhechnikov instead of an icon off the wall.
In general, curses and comparisons are very striking, both in life and in literary works. The merry wives of Windsor call Falstaff a ‘watery pum-pion.’1 In Ostrovsky’s comedy Truth Is Good, but Happiness Is Better, Fili-ciata calls the merchant who is completely under his mother’s thumb ‘a stringless balalaika2 (1973–80, IV:265), which accurately defines his character by comparing him to a thing. Chekhov in his short story ‘The Intelligent Log’ writes to Mizinova, Your character is like gooseberries gone bad’ (1974–83, V:102); similarly, he says this about himself to Su-vorin: ‘Mine is not a character, but a wisp’ (225). These types of humorous statements can often be found in Chekhov’s letters to his brother Alexander: ‘Don’t be a pair of trousers, do come over’ (V:77); ‘In a word, you are a button’ (VI:17). Some of Prutkov’s comparisons are highly expressive: ‘I will easily liken some walking old man to a sand-glass’ (1974, 132). As usual, these types of examples are especially striking in Gogol’s works: ‘You numbskull’ (‘well-roasted rusk’ in the original); You stupid oaf’ (‘stupid log’ in the original) (Gogol 1998, 38). In ‘The Nose,’ the barber’s wife rails at her husband, calling him ‘The dolt, the blockhead’ (195). Podkolyosin says about Kochkaryov in ‘Marriage’: ‘He’s as much use as an old woman’s shoe!’ (238). ‘Director, I ask you! He’s a cork, not a director. An ordinary common or garden cork; nothing more. The sort you use to stop bottles,’ is what Poprishchin calls his superior in ‘Diary of a Madman’ (173).
When described metaphorically as an object, a human face becomes meaningless: ‘It was the type of face commonly known as a jug mug’ (in Dead Souls, Gogol 1997, 143). In ‘Diary of a Madman’ the department head’s face resembles a pharmaceutical vial. Ivan Ivanovich’s mouth is a bit like the Cyrillic letter izhitsa,3 while Ivan Nikiforovich’s nose is like ‘a ripe plum.’
In each of these examples (and in many others in Gogol’s works), there seems to be no social satire, since the social dimension depends on the narrative as a whole. Yet showing a face as a thing is also a possible means of creating political satire. In the days of Louis XVIII, satirical magazines often depicted his face as a ripe pear, with flabby cheeks and a head that narrowed towards the crown. However, when described in terms of the world of things, not just the face but the entire human figure can become comical. ‘Agafya Fedoseevna wore a cap on her head, three warts on her nose, and a coffee-colored housecoat with little yellow flowers. Her whole body resembled a barrel, and therefore it was as hard to find her waist as to see your own nose without a mirror. Her legs were short, formed after the pattern of two pillows’ (in ‘The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,’ Gogol 1999, 210). Despite the softness and roundness of her shape, Agafya Fedoseevna is depicted as a rather power-loving woman. In Dead Souls, a seller of hot punch is depicted with ‘a red copper samovar and a face as red as the samovar, so that from a distance one might have thought there were two samovars in the window, if one samovar had not had a pitch-black beard’ (1997, 4). Grigory Grigoryevich in ‘Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka’ is depicted as follows: ‘Grigory Grigoryevich tumbled into bed, and it looked as if one huge featherbed were lying on another’ (1999, 115). It is revealing to compare this with the portrayal of a person given by Saltykov-Shchedrin in Modern Idyll: ‘He was a man of about fifty, extremely active and absolutely oval. As if he were entirely made of various ovals tied together with a thread that was drawn by some hidden mechanism. The main oval – the stomach – was in the middle, and when it started to sway, all other ovals, big and small, started moving as well’ (1965–77, XV[1]:120). This description could serve as an illustration of Bergson’s theory: ‘We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing’ (2005, 28; italics original). Though the same example reveals its inadequacy. Representing a person as a thing is not always funny, as he maintains, but only when the thing is internally comparable to the person and conveys some of his or her flaws. In Saltykov-Shchedrin’s description we see only a thing that has already lost its connection with a person and hence can no longer make a comical impression.
Stout people have been compared with pillows, barrels, and feather-beds. Thin people are a source of other associations: ‘The slim man: […] nothing more than a sort of toothpick’ (Gogol 1997, 161). Kochkaryov describes skinny Zhevakin: ‘like an old pouch, with all the tobacco shaken out of it’ (1998, 226). The old woman in ‘Shponka’ is characterized as follows: ‘At the same time a little old lady came in, short, a veritable coffee pot in a bonnet’ (1999, 121). A man can be comical in his movements as well: ‘Here’s another token for you: he always waves his arms as he walks. The local assessor, the late Denis Petrovich, always used to say when he saw him in the distance: “Look, look, there goes a windmill”’ (107).
Peculiar and surprisingly apt comparisons can be found in Gogol’s works. Shponka imagines his future wife in a dream, but he is unable to grasp her appearance: ‘Then he suddenly dreamed that his wife was not a person at all, but some sort of woolen fabric’ (1999, 131). It is significant that such externally improbable comparisons in Gogol’s works are given through the description of a dream (‘Shponka,’ ‘Portrait’) or the hallucinations of a madman or an ill person (‘Nevsky Prospect,’ ‘Diary of a Madman’). If this world of fantasy is depicted as real, Gogol sometimes depicts the real world in a illusionary vein. The mixing of the levels of the illusory and the real in the example above was done for comical purposes, but more often than not it takes on a tragic bent in the author’s works, such as in ‘The Overcoat,’ where Akakiy Akakievich turns into an apparition. This may somehow be due to the fact that, in Gogol’s works, not only are people similar to things, but things are anthropomorphized as well. The creaking doors of old-world landowners come to mind: ‘I’m unable to say why they sang – but the remarkable thing was that each door had its own special voice: the door to the bedroom sang in the highest treble, the dining room door in a hoarse bass; while the one in the front hall produced some strange cracked and at the same time moaning sound, so that, listening attentively, one could finally hear quite clearly: “My, oh, my, how cold I am!”’ (in ‘Old World Landowners,’ Gogol 1999, 136). Nozdryov’s barrel organ with one pipe so active that it goes on whistling when the others are already silent belongs to this series. The hissing of the clock in Korobochka’s house reminds Chichikov of the hissing of snakes, ‘but on glancing up he was reassured, for he realized it was the wall clock making up its mind to strike’ (1997, 43).
The comic increases if the thing resembles a specific person rather than man. In Korobochka’s kitchen garden, nets are spread over fruit trees to protect them against magpies and other birds: ‘Several scarecrows had been set up for the same purpose, on long poles with splayed arms; one of them was wearing the mistress’s own bonnet’ (45).
In the examples analysed thus far, appearance communicates the nature of the person represented. Chichikov, Sobakevich, Nozdryov, and Plyushkin and all the other lively characters Gogol created are not only portraits but real live people who represent social and psychological categories of their times. When reasoning abstractly, the very stout or very skinny people, those dressed unusually or resembling windmills, samovars, or pigs, could in themselves be worthy of respect. Even so, such reasoning would be accurate only if it were related to real life, not to works of art, where these external features are signs of the inferiority of the characters portrayed by the author. Herein lies the deep satirical sense of this type of comic.
If a motionless person is described as a thing, then a person in motion is represented as an automaton. Bergson can be evoked once more: ‘The attitudes, gestures and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a mere machine’ (2005, 15; italics original). This perception is faulty. A heart beats and lungs breathe with the accuracy of a mechanism, but this is not funny. The rhythmic convulsions of an epileptic are not funny at all; rather, they are dismaying. A moving automaton can be terrifying and not funny. In Peter’s gallery, which once was located in the Museum of Ethnography, there was a sitting figure of Peter the Great with a wax face and a mechanism hidden inside it. When visitors stopped in front of it, the attendant pressed a pedal, and Peter rose to his full height; people were so frightened by this that the practice was discontinued. An automaton-like person is not always comical, but under the same circumstances a thing can be. One of the town governors in The History of a Town is described as follows: ‘Passion was obliterated from the elements that constituted his nature and was replaced with an inflexibility that operated with the regularity of a most precise mechanism’ (Saltykov 1965–77, VIII:397). Portraying a human as mechanical is funny in this instance because it reveals his inner nature.
All of the above determine the specific kind of comic typical of a puppet show. Indeed, a puppet is a thing, but when it performs in a show, it is a moving thing that is meant to contain a human soul that is not there. The principle of any puppet show consists in the automation of movements that simulate and parody human movements. It is for this reason that human tragedies cannot be represented by a puppet show, though such attempts have been made. For example, Goethe in Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Mission describes a puppet show that depicts scenes from the Bible (the fight between David and Goliath). These scenes create an impression of the grotesque, though they are also comical.
Faust was performed as a folk puppet show that was seen by Goethe. Those performances were not aimed at creating the comic; they strove to arouse horror but also pleasure and joy, with virtue triumphant and vice punished. Tragedy on the stage of a puppet show would be quite impossible for moderns, as it would be perceived as comical. A modern audience at a puppet show laughs when a dagger is plunged into an opponent’s chest. It is impossible to imagine Obraztsov or Demenin staging tragedies written by Racine or Shakespeare, or anybody else in their shows. Russian folk puppet shows are always deliberately rather than involuntarily comical, and the comic is caused not only by automatic movements but also by the intrigue and the course of action. Their actions are mechanical; puppets hit one another over the head with a stick with the accuracy of robots. One of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales, ‘Puppet-makers,’ is based on the comical impression caused by puppets. A toy maker who makes puppets and has them perform is portrayed. One of them is a bribe-taking Collegiate Assessor:4 ‘He placed one hand akimbo on his hip, slipped the other one into the pocket of his trousers, as if putting something hastily into it. He crossed his legs like scissors’ (1965–77, XVI[1]:101). Another is a ‘bribe-giving’ man: ‘Hens, geese, ducks, turkeys and pigs peeked from under his coat; and even an entire cow stuck out of one of his pockets’ (103). The cow moos. The assessor pounces on the briber and snatches everything from him. He even makes him remove his onuchi and lapti5 and finds some money hidden there. Things that are not comical at all in real life, such as extorting peasants, become funny on the stage of a puppet show when it uses its devices for satirical purposes.