11 Ridiculing the Professions

After having examined humans with respect to their appearance, we should next analyse them in terms of their activities. Some professions can be portrayed satirically, and when they are, their activities are depicted only in terms of their external manifestations, which render their content meaningless. The most striking examples are found in Gogol. In ‘The Overcoat,’ Akaky Akakievich is described as a copy clerk totally absorbed in the act of copying texts regardless of their meaning and content. This is the only feature the reader sees, which makes him both pitiful and funny. The same principle of representation is applied when the work of an entire establishment is described: ‘The noise of pens was great and resembled that of several carts loaded with brushwood moving through a wood two feet1 deep in dry leaves’ (1998, 142). In this case, Gogol uses hyperbole as well, which is not characteristic of his comical style. The task of representing some activity in a comical or satirical way becomes easier if it does not require any special intellectual effort and all one’s attention is directed solely towards its external forms. For example, the barber Ivan Yakovlevich in the ‘The Nose’ is portrayed as such, and the way he shaves Major Kovalyov is depicted in detail. The entire process of shaving as well as the pleasure this gives both the barber and the customer is noted: ‘Kovalyov sat down. Ivan Yakovlevich swathed him in a towel and in a single instant, with the aid of a brush, transformed his entire beard and a part of his cheeks into a mass of whipped cream; such as is served at name-day parties in merchants’ households.’ Then follows a sketch of how the major does not allow his newly acquired nose to be touched and how Ivan Yakovlevich, even though it is ‘not at all easy or convenient to shave without grasping his client’s olfactory organ’ (1998, 59), still overcomes the obstacles and manages to shave him.

Some professions are especially popular in humorous literature as well as in art, one of these being the cook. This is related to what was said previously about meals, and the profession is described with good-natured humour. The work of the general’s cook is outlined in ‘The Carriage,’ while the way the mistress cooks is narrated in ‘The Overcoat’: ‘The door was open, because the tailor’s good wife had been cooking some fish or other, and in the process had produced so much smoke in the kitchen that even the cockroaches could no longer be seen’ (121–2).

An activity that is mainly physical cannot be made meaningless at the expense of its content. In these instances, increased attention to the process of the activity results in the description of uncommon skills and remarkable virtuosity in the trade. Ivan Yakovlevich, the barber mentioned above, is an example. The fabric retailer in the second part of Dead Souls also has such qualities: he sways agreeably with his two arms resting on the counter, then adroitly flings down a bolt of cloth onto the counter and thrusts the fabric under Chichikov’s nose:

The price was agreed upon. The iron yardstick, like a magician’s wand, meted out enough for Chichikov’s tailcoat and trousers. Having snipped it a little with his scissors, the merchant performed with both hands the deft tearing of the fabric across its whole width, and on finishing bowed to Chichikov in the most seductive agreeableness. The fabric was straightaway folded and deftly wrapped in paper; the package twirled under the light string. (1997, 364)

However, work that involves at least a small amount of creativity cannot be represented comically. The tailor Petrovich in the ‘The Overcoat’ illustrates this. He is an excellent master, and Gogol shows us comically not so much his work as his personality and his figure, as well as some external characteristics of the profession specific to tailors:

Akaky Akakievich resolved that the coat had to be taken to Petrovich the tailor, who resided somewhere on the fourth floor of a back staircase, and who, despite his squint and pockmarked visage, was rather deft at repairing the trousers and tailcoats of functionaries and other clients – deft, that is, when he was sober.’ (1998, 121)

He is funny when, with his bare legs tucked under him like a Turk, he sits on the table and shows the reader his big toe; he is unable to thread his needle, because yesterday, as his wife puts it, ‘the old one-eyed devil hit the bottle’ (122). However, when he carefully brings Akaky Akak-ievich the impeccably tailored overcoat wrapped up in a pocket hanker-chief, he is not comical but wins over the reader’s favour.

Peasants do not appreciate a tailor’s work since they relate only to the hard physical labour of agriculture. Farm workers respect physical strength, and for this reason the lean and slight figure of the tailor is a target of ridicule in all of European folklore. The tailor is so feeble that he is carried away by the wind; he is pursued by wolves but is quick and agile and escapes up a tree. With all his flaws, he is resourceful and is sometimes characterized as a courageous man. When the wolves stand one on top of another to snatch him from the tree, he shouts: ‘And the bottom one will get the most’ (‘The Noodle Wolf,’ in Afanasyev 1984–85, I:69). The bottom wolf is frightened and runs away, and the entire pyramid of wolves collapses. Grimms’ ‘The Brave Little Tailor’ is among the most popular and well-loved of his tales. A well-known Russian print is titled ‘How a tailor dealt with devils, fought like one of us, earned a houseful of gold and killed all the devils.’ There is also a tale in verse under the picture of how the tailor defeated the little devils. The profession is not the object of satire, and the comic effect occurs through the contrast between the tailor’s physical weakness and his resourcefulness and gumption, which are substitutes for strength.

The doctor is a favorite profession for satirists all over the world, especially in folk theatre and in early European comedy. A doctor, along with Arlecchino and Pantalone, was a fixed character in the Italian com-media dell’arte. The ignorant patients of those times saw only the doctor’s external techniques and actions; they failed to see and understand their meaning and did not trust him. In the folk play Tsar Maximilian the doctor introduces himself to the spectators as follows:

I skilfully treat,

Blood from the dead I delete …

I pull out teeth, I pick at eyes,

To the other world I send some guys […] (Sokolov and Shor 1930, 545)

That doctor treats old people by beating them, he suggests feeding them manure, and so forth. In some popular prints ‘the Dutch therapist and kind pharmacist’ is described. He boasts of changing the old into the young.

The doctor in Punch and Judy theatre is dressed in black and wears huge glasses. Petrushka beats him on the head. The doctor as a comic character appears repeatedly in Molière’s plays, for example, in The Fleet-Footed Doctor, The Imaginary Invalid, and The Doctor in Spite of Himself. In the last of these, Sganarelle pretends to be a doctor and talks gibberish, including some Latin words. In The Imaginary Invalid, the doctor skilfully extorts money from a hypochondriac patient; the comedy ends with a ballet in which eight enema carriers, six druggists, one bachelor, and eight surgeons dance. The ways in which the comic effect is achieved are clear enough and require no theoretical explanation. However, Gogol’s humour is of a different nature. While in Molière’s works, doctors wear special garments, carry huge enemas, etc. – that is, they are represented through external or repetitive manifestations (the ballet) of their profession – Gogol ridicules routine in medical practice. The doctor in ‘The Nose’ whom the Major consults, showing him the smooth place where the nose used to be, responds by recommending: ‘Wash often with cold water’ (1998, 55). Tolstoy also disliked doctors, and in some of his works (Natasha’s illness in War and Peace, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, etc.) he portrays medical art as quackery, the sole purpose of which is to grasp tightly money that patients delicately hand over. Tolstoy’s aim was not to create a comic effect, but it resulted nonetheless.

Gogol also touched cursorily on the teaching profession. A history teacher in The Government Inspector became notorious because he happened to get so carried away when telling students about Alexander of Macedonia that ‘he leapt out from behind his desk, picked up a chair and brought it crashing down on the floor’ (1998, 253). Gogol did not spare scientists either. Through the conversation between two ladies in Dead Souls, the author shows how cautious assumptions become puffed up and exaggerated, giving rise to false ‘truths’ that are later disseminated by lecturers all over the world. Gogol also ridiculed the scientists’ milieu, highlighting some of its negative aspects. ‘God help anyone who goes into education, you’re never safe. Everyone pokes their noses in and interferes. They all want to prove they’re just as learned as the next man’ (253), says Luka Lukich Khlopov, the school inspector, in the first act of The Government Inspector. We can conclude that there is nothing essentially different between the ridicule of professional life and the ridicule of any other aspects of human life. It is remarkable that Gogol, and other Russian satirical authors, never touched on the agricultural labour of peasants as such. Even when viewed only in terms of external actions, a sensible person cannot perceive a serf’s hard labour as comical.