I will now turn to another large domain of the comic, namely, comic characters. It should be made clear at the outset that strictly speaking comic characters do not actually exist. Any negative characteristic can be ridiculed using the same methods by which a comic effect is produced. What are the main techniques for portraying comic characters? It was Aristotle (1984) who said that ‘as for comedy, it is (as has been observed) an imitation of men worse than the average’ (II:2319). In other words, exaggeration of negative traits to draw the reader or spectator’s attention to them is required in order to create comic characters. In our study of nineteenth-century Russian literature, we noticed that they are created, as we have already shown, by taking some particular feature and magnifying it so that it becomes visible to everyone. Hegel (1975, 18–19) defines caricature as follows: ‘in caricature the specific character is exaggerated and is, as it were, a superfluity of the characteristic.’
Gogol created his comic characters in exactly this way: Manilov [from the Russian lure] is the embodiment of sugariness, Sobakevich [from the Russian dog] of rudeness, Nozdryov [from the Russian nostril] of dissoluteness, Pluyshkin [from the Russian bun] of avarice, etc. But exaggeration is not the only precondition for a character to be comical. Aristotle pointed out that negative traits are exaggerated in comedy but that they must remain within certain limits and reflect a a degree of moderation.1 He noted that negative qualities should not go as far as depravity, should not make the spectator suffer, and must not cause aversion or feelings of superiority. Minor flaws are comical: cowards in everyday life (but not at war) can prove to be comical, along with boasters, toadies, careerists, small cheats, pedants and profiteers of all kinds, hoarders and grabbers, vain and arrogant people who try to appear younger in such a way that they look ridiculous, despotic wives and henpecked husbands, etc.
If we took this approach we would have to make a complete catalogue of human flaws and illustrate each with examples from literature. Such attempts have actually been made. Vices – flaws that become pernicious – are the subject of tragedy rather than comedy. Even so the demarcation is not always so clear; for example, Molière portrays Don Juan as a comic character who perishes tragically. Where is the line between depravity, which constitutes the core of tragedy, and the flaws that are possible in comedy? It is impossible to determine this logically, as it depends on the author’s talent and skill. A trait that is comical if exaggerated moderately turns out to be tragic if taken to the level of a vice. This is obvious when, for example, two misers – Plyushkin in Gogol’s Dead Souls and the baron in Pushkin’s ‘The Covetous Knight’ – are compared. The baron’s avarice is immense:
All, all I hold
In sway … Like some dark, brooding demon I
Sit on my hidden throne. (1990, 100)
Besides being avaricious, the baron has a gloomy philosophy of the power of gold and an awareness of his own potential power over the world. He has a peculiar ambition, and he is also a villain, for his avarice is a vice linked to dreadful crimes. He is a usurer who drives people to despair and ruin. Caressing his most valuable gold coins, he recollects how he obtained them:
Indeed, if all the tears,
The blood and sweat the gold here kept did cost
Were by the earth disgorged, a second Flood
Might easily ensue, and in my cellars
I then would drown. (101)
In contrast to the baron, Plyushkin is small-minded, and Gogol does not grant him any qualities other than avarice. He depicts the character using comic exaggeration. He has neither philosophy, nor lust for power, nor ambition. He stockpiles agricultural products rather than gold; he collects unnecessary things rather than jewellery; he picks up old soles under a footbridge along with rusty nails and broken pieces of pottery. His appearance is described accordingly: Chichikov first mistakes him for a female housekeeper and then learns that this housekeeper shaves rather seldom, ‘because his whole chin along with the lower part of his cheeks resembled a currycomb made of iron wire, used in stables for grooming horses’ (in Dead Souls, Gogol 1997, 116). All of this causes laughter; yet Plyushkin is not completely comical. Taking a closer look at him, we can see that though he does not commit bloody crimes his peasants are in terrible, miserable shape. There are no roofs on their houses but only gables and poles; cracks in window frames are plugged with rags; people have run away, never to return, because they are starving. Plyushkin may be the least comical and the most miserable of all Gogol’s characters, nonetheless the author has a good sense of proportion: just a little more and the character would not be comical.
It is noteworthy that Gogol sometimes softens the caricatures of the human types he describes. For example, Pyotr Petrovich Petukh is portrayed as a glutton, which is his main quality. But he is also hospitable, which does not diminish his negative qualities but does create a realistic, true-to-life background for them. This applies to some other characters in Dead Souls as well. Gogol writes about the officials living in the provincial town whom he severely and justly ridicules: ‘Truth to tell, however, they were all kindly folk, got along well among themselves; treated each other with perfect friendliness, and their conversations bore the stamp of some especial simple-heartedness and familiarity’ (1997, 157). He continues: ‘But generally, they were kindly folk, full of hospitality, and the man who sat down to table with them or spent an evening at whist was already an intimate’ (158). Khlestakov writes the same about the inhabitants of the town in his letter to Tryapichkin. Having described all the characters humorously, he adds: ‘But on the whole they’re not a bad lot, hospitable too’ (Gogol 1998, 333).
Historians of literature (as far as I know) never quote these words: Why? Could it be that Gogol, who has just shown us the entire unattractive picture of social life in an old provincial town, contradicts himself here and refutes his own statements? Certainly not! Rather than a mistake, this is the author’s worldview: despite all their negative qualities, his characters are individuals of flesh and blood. ‘Those people are bad because they lack education, are ignorant, but not by nature’ is what Belin-sky says about Gogol’s characters (1953–6, VI:359–60). Nuanced images are less grotesque and more true to life, but mitigation requires moderation, just as comic exaggeration does. Gogol does not always mention the positive qualities of his comic characters, and when he does, it is only in passing. Sobakevich is an excellent owner and his men prosper; Manilov’s manners are pleasing; Plyushkin once used to be quite different. Korobochka is a blend of various character traits joined together mainly but not exclusively by stupidity and thrift. The technique for portraying them differs somewhat from the one used to represent other landowners in Dead Souls. As a rule, Gogol does not elaborate on the positive qualities of his negative characters, as this would deprive them of comicality; however, he does it in one of his stories, ‘Old-World Landowners.’ Plyushkin is practically at the lowest level of comicality, bordering on the disgusting; while Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna are at the highest level, bordering on the idealized.
This softened portrayal of negative characters is typical not only of Gogol. Famusov, for example, is a conventional early nineteenth-century Russian nobleman from Moscow but is hardly a monster of cruelty. He is quite convincing as a character, and his image is perceived to be realistic and true to life. When comic characters have absolutely no potentially positive qualities, they seem less artistically portrayed and convincing than those more gently depicted. This is the case with Skalozub, who is, so to speak, a pure, distilled example of caricature; like him, many of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s characters are vivid though one-sided.
But there is one more condition, one more opportunity, to strengthen the characters’ comicality: they are always involved in intrigues, and for accomplished writers, intrigue can serve as a means of sketching them. Gogol’s Khlestakov is not only the hero of a comedy of intrigue but also a sharply drawn character or psychological type, just like the town governor and others. This is quite obvious in ‘Marriage,’ where the action is based on the contrast between two characters: the languid, flabby, irresolute Podkolyosin and the enterprising and vigorous Kochkaryov. The intrigue and the character are a single whole in these cases, which is not necessarily a property of the comic but is certainly one of a great talent. We note, for example, that there is no such unity in Molière’s plays. Bergson casually remarks that this playwright always places a comic personage in the centre and that the titles of his comedies usually define his or her character. Titles like The Miser and The Misanthrope indicate this directly, whereas other comedies have the names of the main characters as their titles, which became common nouns embodying negative qualities: Tartuffe, a hypocrite and a sanctimonious person; Don Juan, a philanderer; The Prodigious Snob, an ambitious man; The Imaginary Invalid, a hypochondriac; etc. From this perspective, Molière’s comedies are typical comedies of characters rather than comedies of intrigue.
Even so, dividing Molière’s comedies into those of intrigue and those of characters is inaccurate, because almost every comedy has both, if by intrigue one means an action based on a conflict. The question is this: What is the relation between the intrigue and the characters? In Gogol’s works this connection is quite organic and innate, which is not always true with Molière, and Belinsky was right to state that the latter’s plots are rather similar as they are based on an opposition between a pair of lovers and the main character who opposes their union. They fool him and achieve their purpose even though they fail to, cannot, or do not want to cheat their antagonist by themselves. Their servants, sly foxes and cheats, and on whose actions the entire intrigue is based, do this for them. Duping as one of the means of achieving comic effects was studied above. Negative characters are defeated in an intrigue and, at the same time, the intrigue vividly reveals all the negative traits of the characters.
It is not my intention to make a long list of comic characters in Russian or West European literature but rather to establish a general typology and determine the principles on which it is based. The problem of comic characters, however, has not been resolved completely, as all the types examined so far are negative. A slight addition of positive qualities makes those characters believable in real life, even though their nature does not change. However, when closely examining everyday life, as well as carefully reading literary works of great talent, we find that some comical characters who do not seem to possess any negative qualities are still comical. We laugh at them but at the same time we take a liking to them. In short, not only do negative comic characters exist but so do positive ones.
Why is this so? Does it contradict the theory I am suggesting – that laughter is caused when negative qualities are revealed? Or are we dealing with a different type of laughter, that is, not ridiculing laughter? It may seem that positive types cannot be negative from either a theoretical point of view or in art. The characters in Fonvizin’s works are clearly divided into positive and negative. There is not a single positive character in Gogol’s The Government Inspector. Most of Ostrovsky’s heroes are negative. However, some merchants unexpectedly come to their senses in the comedy’s happy ending, which is desired by the offended characters as well as the spectators. But the ending happens to be somewhat unexpected, as it does not result naturally from the negative heroes’ characters. In Poverty Is No Crime, the family despot Gordey Tortsov says at the end: ‘Now I have become another man’ (Ostrovsky 1973–80, Act III, scene 15), and he gives his daughter’s hand in marriage to his clerk, whom he had objected to before, which is exactly what the young lovers have been dreaming of. The comedy must end at the moment the negative type becomes positive. Nevertheless, there can be positive comical heros or comic characters.
In order to come to grips with this issue, bear in mind that completely negative or completely positive people do not exist in real life. Traces of humanity can be found somewhere deep inside even in confirmed criminals; and conversely, completely virtuous people often arouse an instinctive antipathy in us, especially if they are inclined to moralizing. Every person is a blend of positive and negative qualities in various proportions. Some people, for example, make others happy as soon as they appear. A certain optimism mixed with unflagging, infectious gaiety is a positive quality that causes us to smile and like someone. People like this are never pessimistic and always in the best of moods. They are good-natured, they make modest demands, there is nothing they especially strive for and they are able to enjoy the moment. They can be comical whatever moral flaws they might have. Hegel believed that ‘the indestructible trust in oneself’ is the main quality of a comical character. The laughter caused by these characters is not entirely ridiculing; it is more often sim-plyjoyful laughter, which has not yet been studied. But this does not fully explain the laughter caused by this type of character, whose optimism we both enjoy and laugh at. Similar to other cases of the comic, optimism is not funny; it suffices to read Etyudy Optimizma [Sketches of Optimism] by Mechnikov to see this.
Mature optimism is a philosophy of life that sometimes develops despite the serious ordeals encountered along the way. This optimism results from strength of character and does not make one laugh. It is apparent that the optimism that makes people laugh has quite different grounds, or rather has no grounds at all. It is the kind of optimism that is easy to live with and that is, so to speak, based on itself. It is totally subjective, individualistic, rather pleasant, and thrives on the trivial details of everyday life. It makes us smile involuntarily, even though this good-natured self-satisfaction and naive joy of life is quite superficial and fragile. It is also a weakness, which provokes a burst of laughter when it is unexpectedly exposed and punished. This cheerfulness in a good-natured person who is always content with everything in this world (including him or herself) predisposes us to laughter but does not cause it. Talented clowns who enter the circus ring beaming with pleasure usually understand this very well. Karandash,2 for example, entered the ring with a small washtub and a bunch of birch twigs,3 very pleased with himself, as if going to a bathhouse. Boris Vyatkin appeared with cheerful whistling or loud cries, leading his dog ahead of him. This happiness and cheerfulness serves as a contrasting background for the unexpected troubles that befall those innocents, which cause loud laughter rather than a smile. But this type of character is certainly comical too, regardless of what happens to him, and the misfortunes he encounters strengthen the comic effect that is already inherent in the character. It most often, but not always, gives rise to incongruous ridicule.
I conclude that these characters are comical not because of their positive qualities but because of the weaknesses and inadequacies revealed through their behaviour and mannerisms, which disclose their pettiness and self-absorption. When these are suddenly exposed, it causes a burst of laughter. During this discussion of comical optimists, we should mention Falstaff, who is significantly more complex than the simple-hearted clowns who make circus audiences laugh. Unlike comic characters who embody a single quality (Sobakevich), the Falstaff type combines a number of different qualities that together make him true to life. One of his main qualities is that he is always self-confident, calm, cheerful, and joyful no matter what. Shakespeare greatly valued this character and included him in three plays: Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor. He is a negative character, but his negative qualities are those of a cheerful and resilient person who causes laughter even when he doesn’t do anything. He is a lively and uniquely expressive person. Several descriptions of Falstaff have been given by authors of works on Shakespeare; the best of these is by Pushkin, who admired him and wrote in Tabletalk:
It looks like Shakespeare’s multifaceted genius was nowhere else reflected with such diversity as in Falstaff, whose interlinked vices form an amusing, ugly chain, similar to ancient bacchanalia. When examining his character, we see that sensuality is his main streak; when he was young he was a rough and cheap lady-killer, which was probably his main concern. Now he is already over fifty, he has grown stout and decrepit; gluttony and wine have noticeably gained the upper hand over Venus. Moreover, he is a coward, but having spent his life with young rakes, subject to their constant sneers and pranks, he covers up his poverty with evasive and derisive impudence. He is boastful out of both habit and prudence. Falstaff is not stupid at all; on the contrary he also possesses the manners of a person with some experience of high society. He has no rules and is as weak as a woman. He needs strong Spanish wine (sack), a rich dinner and money for his mistresses: he is prepared to do anything to get it, except he thinks it is dangerous. (1974–78, VII:178)
Sometimes Falstaff’s witty retorts help him triumph over his opponents – for example, when they threaten to render fat from him – but sometimes he is defeated and ridiculed, as can be expected in a comic character. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, he writes love letters to two married women simultaneously but meets with failure; in both instances the women remain faithful to their husbands. In the first instance, he hides in a basket with dirty, stinking laundry, and is thrown into the water along with the laundry. In the second, he tries to escape disguised as a stout woman and is caught and beaten. This is a typical folklore plot, but the Falstaff type is purely Shakespearian. He is both comical and satirical and thus resembles Rabelais’ characters. Writing about Falstaff, Pushkin contrasts Shakespeare with Molière and finds the latter’s characters one-dimensional: ‘With Molière, a hypocrite courts his benefactor’s wife, hypocritically; he takes stewardship of a manor, hypocritically; he asks for a glass of water, hypocritically’ (ibid.). On the other hand, Shakespeare is always multidimensional and demonstrates the highest skill in creating comic characters who are true to life, along with vivid comical intrigues.
Optimism in everyday life is not the only positive quality that can be interpreted in a comical way. Resourcefulness along with cunning, adaptability to life, the ability to find one’s bearings in any difficult situation and to find a way out of it, are similar qualities. Certain characters in a comedy – those who discredit their clumsy antagonists – are endowed with these qualities. The antagonists are always negative, and the smart character who defeats them becomes both a positive and comic character. The smart and perky servants in classical Italian and French comedies are a variety of this type; for example, Truffaldino in Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters, and Figaro in Beaumarchais’ The Barber of Seville fall within this category. We sympathize with the character who has been defeated in a tragedy; just as we do with the winner in a comedy, even when that victory has been achieved by devious means, provided they are witty and cunning and testify to the optimistic character of the victor. As we saw, these types of cunning servants are found in most of Molière’s comedies, in which characters usually belong to two different generations: the old and the young. Negative types represent the older generation (the Miser, Tartuffe, the Misanthrope) and positive ones, the younger generation. The young want to love and get married; the old want to prevent them from doing so. The cheerful and cunning servants of the young help them triumph while discrediting the elders with all their vices. We need not go into detail. It suffices to mention that there is a certain type of perky and cheerful servant in classical comedy who is simultaneously comical and positive. These characters are present, in a somewhat different form, not just in comedies but in old picaresque novels as well. The hero in these novels – a servant, or a tramp, or a soldier – deceives his master and always emerges victorious from difficult situations. Unlike the servants in Molière’s comedies, the hero struggles against his masters and against the high and mighty. The conflict evolves into a social contest, and in this respect picaresque novels are close to tales about jesters, the characters being closely connected with the intrigue, which mostly consists in duping.
The comical picaresque novel was created and developed in Spain in the sixteenth century (Lazarillo de Tormes, 1554). It is in Spain, too, that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were created. Much has been written about Don Quixote in numerous books on aesthetics and on the history of literature, so we can be brief and not repeat what has already been said; instead let us focus on the comic of positive heroes who are as varied as humans are. Don Quixote is a remarkably positive character due to his noble aspirations and his lofty ideals, but he is also ridiculous because he is so impractical, just the opposite of those cheats and dodgers who prosper and succeed in the struggle for their own well-being or for the well-bring of those whom they serve. Don Quixote is comical not only because of his positive qualities but also his negative ones, which, rather than his lofty ideals, are what have made him popular around the world. All the main adventures linked to him are comical. Sancho Panza also contributes to the comic effect of the novel. Nobility imparts not only comicality but also significance and depth to all of Don Quixote’s adventures, a combination unique in world literature, in that the comic eventually becomes tragic.
I will confine myself to the few observations above. We could further discuss Mr Pickwick and other Dickens heroes, Charlie Chaplin and the touching comical heroes created by him, the image of the good soldier Švejk created by Čapek,4 and a great number of others, but this would mean straying too far from the point. It was important to determine when and how positive heroes are comical, and this has been done using the examples provided.