In some instances, for both external and internal reasons, a victim’s lack of wit is ridiculed along with foiled plans. Laughter can be caused by stupidity, lack of power of observation, or an inability to see a connection between cause and effect.
There is a dual aspect to incongruity in literary works and in real life: either people say absurd things or they do stupid things. On closer examination, however, this division appears to be superficial since both cases can be combined into one. In the first, an incorrect train of thought results in words that produce laughter, whereas in the second, a wrong conclusion is not expressed through words but actions that cause laughter. Lack of logic can be either obvious or hidden: the former is comical in itself for those who see or hear it, while the latter requires exposure to make it funny. For individuals who demonstrate lack of logic, exposure usually comes only when they feel the consequences of their stupidity. For an observer, spectator, or reader, exposure of hidden incongruity can happen when an interlocutor’s witty and unexpected remark reveals the inconsistency of the speaker’s judgment.
In real life, incongruity is probably the most frequent type of comicality. Inability to connect cause and effect is quite widespread and occurs more frequently than one would expect. It is worth quoting Cherny-shevsky, who has already been cited: ‘Stupidity is the main object of our ridicule, the main source of the comical’ (1974, IV:189). Some theorists also emphasize the significance of stupidity for defining the comic. Kant (thought that ‘whatever is to arouse lively, convulsive laughter must contain something absurd’ (1987, §54, 332: 203). Among other explanations of the comic, Richter defines it as ‘sensually perceived utmost unreasonableness’ (1813, Abteilung VI, Programm §28). Dobrolyubov1 considered the stupidity of characters to be its main feature. If the town governor and Khlestakov [in Gogol’s The Government Inspector] were more clever, there would be no comedy: ‘A comedy […] ridicules the person’s efforts to avoid the difficulties that are created and sustained by his own stupidity’ (1961–64, III:173). Nikolayev believes that Dobro-lyubov is mistaken here and that it is not the town governor’s stupidity that is relevant but the fact that he is a socially negative character. At any rate, stupidity is a device for provoking laughter, and Gogol was writing a comedy, not a treatise. Being stupid and being socially harmful are not mutually exclusive, as stupidity is a means of exposing harmfulness. Vulis2 writes that ‘joyful, humorous laughter is a kind of a protection against fools, a social factor that weeds out the mistakes and flaws that do not seem to be fundamental at first sight but would lead to a real disaster if they became a norm’ (1966, 19). Complete stupidity would certainly be a disaster, but Gogol criticizes not stupidity but the social conditions that create town governors like Anton Antonovich as well as officials and landowners’ sons like Khlestakov; their stupidity is simply a comical and satirical device for ridicule.
Incongruity functions in the same way as all other forms of the comic. In his Aesthetics, Hartmann notes that ‘plain ignorance is not comical but ignorance that has not been revealed yet is’ (1958, 619). But this is wrong, as ignorance that is hidden and not noticeable by anyone cannot be comical. Laughter starts the moment that hidden ignorance suddenly shows up in the words or acts of a fool and becomes perceivable through the senses and evident to everyone. A different definition can be given as well: comical incongruity can be understood as a thought mechanism that prevails over its content. This condition is not present when, for example, a scientist makes a mistake in calculating or a doctor an erroneous diagnostic, etc. These sorts of mistakes of the mind are not comical, as they do not represent mechanical incongruity. I will not attempt to systematize because it is not relevant. I will simply give a few telling examples.
Incongruity occurs very frequently in Gogol’s works. Korobochka, who is ready to let Chichikov have the dead souls, remarks hesitatingly: ‘Maybe they’d somehow come in handy around the house on occasion’ (1997, 51), which completely exasperates the latter. One notices that many of Gogol’s characters – Khlestakov, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, Nozdryov, Korobochka, and others – are unable to express their thoughts clearly and to describe intelligibly what has happened. Bobchinsky, relating how he met Khlestakov for the first time, drags both Rastakovsky and Korobkin into the story, along with a certain Pochechuev, whose stomach starts ‘to rumble’ (Gogol 1998, 257). He also describes in detail how and where he met Dobchinsky – ‘Near the stall where they sell meat pies’ (257) – which is totally irrelevant. He draws a series of conclusions that are meant to make it obvious that the visitor is more likely an inspector. Bobchinsky’s story about Khlestakov’s arrival is another example of inconsistency and stupidity as he is not able to pick out the main point. Gogol’s characters’ train of thought is sometimes most unexpected and surprising. Two ladies think that dead souls are a sign of Chichikov’s intention to go off with the governor’s daughter; the postmaster is convinced that Chichikov is Captain Kopeikin, but then he remembers that Kopeikin is an invalid without an arm and a leg whereas Chichikov is absolutely healthy. Lack of logic is especially evident when it is used in an attempt to justify faulty acts.
The town governor’s words about the non-commissioned officer’s widow come to mind: ‘She flogged herself’ (Gogol 1998, 317). So do the words of the assessor in The Government Inspector, who always reeks of vodka and who explains it by saying that ‘the wet nurse dropped him when he was a baby and he’s smelt of vodka ever since’ (252). The woman in the story about the quarrel between Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforov-ich, who takes not only Ivan Nikiforovich’s wide nankeen trousers and other rags but also a gun outside for airing, is a typical example of incongruous behaviour based on a subconscious conclusion made by analogy.
Comical old women in comedies are often characterized as stupid. In Ostrovsky’s Truth Is Good, but Happiness Is Better, Mavra Tarasovna says the following about the man whom she considers to be dead even though she has been informed that he is alive: ‘There is no way for him to be alive because I have been writing a request in church for the priest to offer up a prayer for the peace of his soul for twenty years: can a man really endure this?’ (1973–80, IV:313).
Though logic teaches us that conclusions by analogy have no cognitive value, this sort of reasoning does occur very frequently in real life. Children reason primarily through analogy, and it is only much later that they learn to think about the original causes of the phenomena around them. Here is an example: A grandmother puts some salad on her grandson’s plate and pours some vegetable oil on it. The boy asks: ‘Granny, will you pour the oil on me too?’ In From Two to Five, Chukovsky3 (1963) has collected some material on the linguistic creativity of children, and it would not be less interesting to collect data on their logic, where certain primitive, naive reflective quests and attempts to find connections between phenomena can be detected when they try to understand the world; whereas the logic of adults is strewn with ridiculous errors.
Incongruity is widespread in clownery. Boris Vyatkin4 used to enter the arena with his small dog Manyunya, leading it on a short, thick piece of ship rope, which immediately made the audience laugh with delight. This example seems to prove directly Hegel’s5 theory: ‘Any contrast […] between the end and the means can become comical’ (Hegel, I). A thick rope is totally unsuitable for leading a small dog, and the contrast between the means and the end causes laughter.
In all of these examples, there appears to be a lack of logic on the surface which reveals itself to the spectator, listener, or reader through acts or words that are obviously silly. But there can be hidden incongruity, not immediately perceived, that someone notices and exposes by a remark that instantly reveals stupidity and causes laughter. These types of remarks require a certain power of observation and talent and are the response of a sharp mind attuned to recognizing stupidity. The ability to give these kinds of responses is one of the forms of wit. The following incident from the life of George Bernard Shaw, supposedly drawn from real life, has been widely cited. The beautiful dancer Isadora Duncan is supposed to have declared: ‘I am the most beautiful woman in England, you are the cleverest man. In my opinion, we should have a child together. With my body and your brains, what a wonder it would be.’ Shaw is purported to have replied: ‘But what if it had my body and your brains?’ A similar though somewhat different anecdote was reprinted in the magazine Nauka i zhizn (Science and Life; 1966, no. 3):
AN ANGRY LADY: Well, you know, if I were your wife, I would put some poison into your morning coffee!
THE GENTLEMAN: If I were your husband, I would drink that poison with pleasure!
Incongruity as a means of creating comic effect is often found in folklore. All over Europe, from the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance with its humanism, when collections of fabliaux, facetiae, and Schwanke were published and were partially incorporated into classical literature (Chaucer, Boccaccio), as well as in our current research, which still provides new materials, this kind of timeless folklore continues to thrive. Nasreddin, a cheerful and witty person pretending to be a simpleton, appeared in the East, became popular in all the countries of the Middle East, and is still popular today. Not everything is equally witty and comical in folklore; however, one can find true gems in it.
I will examine briefly Russian folklore even though the number of different folktales about fools, dolts, and simpletons is vast. This is not because there are many fools in real life and people want to ridicule them; instead, it can be explained by the fact that evident or exposed stupidity causes healthy and pleasant laughter. This laughter castigates fools, and the opinion of some researchers that these folktales are meant to be satirical and to criticise stupidity cannot be considered correct. In several types of folktales the main characters are fools. One type evokes the inhabitants of a specific region, for example, in Ancient Greece the inhabitants of Abdera, or Abderites. In Germany, similarly, Swabians are reputed to be dull. The folk tale about seven Swabians is one of the most joyful of all. Young Engels6 wrote about these tales: ‘The wit, the natural manner of both arrangement and workmanship, good-natured humour which always accompanies biting scorn so that it should not become too malicious, the strikingly comical situations could indeed put a great deal of our literature to shame’ (1839, no. 189).
In Russia, inhabitants of the former Poshekhonsky district of Yaroslav Province are for some reason considered to be dull. It is possible, however, that this association originates not from folklore but from Bereza-isky’s (1798) Anekdoty drevnikh poshekhontsev s prisovokupleniyem zabavnogo slovarya [Anecdotes of Ancient Poshekhonians with the Addition of an Amusing Dictionary]. No Poshekhonians are ever mentioned in any collection of Russian folktales. Stories about simpletons centre around silly actions: they sow salt, try to milk hens, carry light in bags, drive a horse into a collar instead of putting the collar on it, jump into trousers, cut the branch they are sitting on, etc. They buy a gun at a fair and load it, and to see how it works one of them looks into the barrel, as he wants to see the bullet fly out. All these examples belong to the category I have labelled incongruous actions. Stupidity in these cases is a collective phenomenon that becomes characteristic of all the inhabitants of one region or simply several persons simultaneously.
Tales about silly acts of a particular person are another type of folktale. A compassionate but stupid woman, sitting on a cart, places some of the luggage on her knees to lighten her horse’s load. These types of stories can be classed as comical folk stories. There exist still more complex plots. For example, in one folktale (No. 400 in Afanasyev 1984—5, III), brothers send a fool to the city to do some shopping. ‘Ivanushko bought everything: a table, spoons, cups, some salt; the entire cart is filled with all and sundries.’ Everything looked all right, but fools in folktales have a certain quality: they are compassionate, which induces them to commit unreasonable acts. In this example, the scrawny horse becomes exhausted: ‘Well, Ivanushko thinks, the horse has four legs and the table has four of them too; so the table will get home on its own!’ (126). He throws the table out of the cart onto the road. Later he feeds all the victuals to crows and even puts the pots over tree stumps so that they will not feel chilly, etc. His brothers beat him. This folktale is very telling in many respects. The fool perceives the world in a distorted way and draws the wrong conclusions, which make listeners laugh. Even so his inner motives are laudable: he has compassion for everybody, is ready to share his last possessions, and thereby involuntarily arouses our sympathy. This fool is a better person than many clever men.
This cannot be said about the folktale ‘Perfect Fool.’ A mother tells her son ‘Sonny, you should go mingle with people and learn common sense.’ He passes by two peasants who are threshing peas and starts literally to rub up against them. They beat him, and his mother says to him: ‘You should have told them: let God help you, good people! Carry them forever, cart them forever.’ The fool meets a funeral procession and utters the wish his mother has taught him; he is beaten once more. At a wedding, he utters his mother’s precept that he should say ‘dirge and incense,’ and he is beaten again. This folktale is very popular, and there are a number of variants of it. The fool in this tale is obliging and benevolent and wants to please everybody. But he is always late; he applies the past to the present and, in spite of his kindness, provokes everyone’s anger, earning nothing but beatings. Lenin refers to this folktale to characterize statesmen who are unable to adapt to the present and who, guided by the principles of the past, always make blunders. Another example is about the girl who goes to the river to rinse a mop. Her fiancé lives in a village on the other bank. She imagines that she gives birth to a son, that he walks out onto the ice, that it breaks and he drowns. She starts to wail and lament. Her father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and others come and, having heard her story, they also start to wail. When her fiancé hears this, he crosses the river and after learning what has happened, goes off to see if there is anybody in the world more stupid than his fiancée, and usually finds someone.
In many cases folktales about fools that include the motif of duping are inseparable from those about smart fellows. An old woman’s son has died, and a soldier, who calls himself ‘Finally, a guest from the world of the dead,’ manages to get himself invited to spend a night in her house. He offers to deliver a shirt, some linen, and victuals for her son to the other world. The old woman trusts him, and the soldier carries off for himself the gifts meant for her son. However, Ivan the Fool, the hero of folktales, is quite a different phenomenon. He is a fool only at the beginning: he sits on the stove bench, covered with soot and snot, and everybody laughs at him. But it is this fool who later proves to be cleverer than his brothers and who commits various extraordinary and heroic feats. There is a certain philosophy inherent in this: the hero is endowed with the most important qualities – spiritual beauty and moral strength – and eventually wins over the listeners’ sympathy and compassion. The fool in Russian folktales possesses moral virtues, and this is more relevant than conventional intelligence.