The cases examined so far are forms of hidden parody. Though everyone knows what parody is, it is not at all easy to give a precise scientific definition of it. Here is how Borev defines it in his book O komicheskom (On the Comical): ‘Parody is an imitation of comic exaggeration and it is an exaggerated and ironical reproduction of characteristic individual features of the form of a certain phenomenon that exposes the comic and brings its content down to a lower level’ (1957, 208). One can see that this definition is based on a tautology: ‘Parody is comic exaggeration […] that exposes the comic.’ But we are not told what the comic actually is, nor what causes laughter. Parody is considered to be an exaggeration of particular features, although it does not always include the exaggeration proper to caricature. Parody is said to have specific features, but our observations do not confirm this. Negative phenomena at the social level can also be parodied. To resolve this issue, I will examine some materials before drawing conclusions.
Parody consists in the imitation of external characteristics of any phenomenon in our life (a person’s manners, expressions, etc.) that completely overshadows or negates the inner meaning of what is being parodied. Everything can be parodied: a person’s mannerisms and actions, his gestures, gait, facial expressions, speech, professional habits, and professional jargon. Not only can humans be parodied, but so can the material things they create. Parody attempts to show that there is emptiness behind the external forms that express the mental side of individuals. Imitation of the female circus rider’s graceful movements by a clown always causes laughter: there is the semblance of elegance and grace but ultimately only clumsiness that is quite the opposite. Thus, parody is a device for revealing an inner flaw in the person parodied. The clown’s parody does not, however, expose the emptiness of the subject parodied but rather the absence of positive qualities of the individual imitated.
Chekhov in ‘A Night before a Trial’ describes a medical prescription that can easily be considered a parody. A man pretending to be a doctor spends the night at a postal station next door to a pretty woman who is ill, examines her, and then writes the following prescription:
Rx.
Sic transit 0.05
Gloria mundi 1.0
Aquae destillatae 0.1
A tablespoon every two hours.
To Ms Syelova
Dr Zaitsev. (1974–83, III:122)
This has all the semblance of a prescription; it contains all the proper external features: the requisite symbol Rx. (i.e., ‘recipe – take’), Latin terms and decimal numbers standing for the quantity and proportions, the dosage, and the instruction that the medicine should be dissolved in a certain amount of distilled water. The person for whom it has been prescribed is mentioned along with the one who has written it. All the same, the most important thing is missing, the one that constitutes the very content of any prescription: medication. The Latin words are not the name of medication but the Latin sayings sic transit (so passes) and gloria mundi (the glory of the world).
If there is a parody here, it is because external features of the phenomenon are copied or reproduced while the inner content is missing. As we already know, this is the nature of the type of comic studied here. In this example the situation becomes more comical as the story unravels: the author of the prescription is taken to court and accused of bigamy. The woman he examined while pretending to be a doctor happens to be the wife of the public prosecutor who will be in charge of the case. The saying ‘sic transit …’ proves to be quite applicable to the author of the prescription, whose surname, Zaitsev [from the Russian hare] was not chosen by Chekhov unintentionally. The same applies to the surname of the patient, Mrs Syelova [from the Russian has eaten].
Perhaps this example is not typical, let us take a different one: A teacher giving a lesson is gesticulating wildly. One pupil who has been punished is standing at the blackboard behind the teacher’s back, facing the class. He repeats all of the teacher’s gestures, swinging his hands like the teacher does and repeating his facial expressions, guessing correctly, for he knows the teacher very well. The pupils will cease listening to the teacher and will look only at the mischievous boy at the blackboard who is parodying him. By repeating the teacher’s gestures, the pupil renders the content of his speech meaningless. In this case, parody consists in repeating the external features of the phenomenon that overshadow its meaning for those who perceive it. This example differs from the previous one since movement serves as a means of parody, but in essence it is the same. In the English comic film The Adventures of Mr Pitkin in a Hospital, the protagonist enters the hospital dressed as a nurse. To hide the fact that he is disguised, he imitates a woman’s gait in a very characteristic way, walking in high heels and swinging his hips rather excessively. Spectators see his figure from behind, and everybody laughs.
Literary parodies are most often discussed and defined in poetics. When any literary genre starts to be parodied, this means it is becoming outdated. But literary parodies that already existed in antiquity – The War of Mice and Frogs was a parody of the Iliad – are only a particular case of parody. Mikhail Bakhtin1 (1965) wrote in great detail about the prevalence of literary parody in the Middle Ages, while Kozma Prutkov ridicules the passion for Spanish motifs that developed in Russian poetry in the 1940s. Chekhov, a committed realist, was an unsurpassed master who parodied the romantically exuberant style of Jules Verne’s fantasy novels – examples include Flying Islands, The Swedish Match, One Thousand and One Passions, and What Can Be Most Often Found in Novels. In these instances, the author’s individual style, which is at the same time a characteristic of something known, (the movement he belongs to, for example) is ridiculed in light of a new aesthetics.2 Furthermore, flaws in the literature of the current period are also ridiculed.
Parody is one of the strongest means of social satire, and folklore provides striking examples. Many parodies of church services, of the Catechism, and of prayers are found in Russian and world folklore. Again, parody is ridiculous only when it exposes the inner weakness being parodied. Parodies, and the use of well-known literary forms for satirical purposes, when directed not against their authors but against socio-political phenomena, should not be lumped together. For example, Pushkin’s ‘Monument’ and Lermontov’s ‘Lullaby’ cannot be ridiculed. There were many different satires in circulation in 1905 that imitated these authors but were not parodies of them, which in effect is what makes them different from literary parodies.
A sonnet published in the magazine Signal in 1905 began with this line: ‘Oh, Executioner, don’t value people’s love!’ The sonnet was ‘Dedicated to Trepov’ (the Governor General of St Petersburg, who had been granted emergency powers). The satire was aimed at him, not Pushkin. Shebuyev’s poem ‘To a Journalist’ (resembling Lermontov’s ‘Mountain Tops’) is about the false promise of freedom of speech in the Tsar’s manifesto and warns journalists not to trust him:
Have a little patience,
You too will rest in jail! (Satira 1960, 403)
These cases are not parodies but travesties; they always have comic aims, are very often used for satire, and use ready-made literary forms for purposes not necessarily intended by the author.