My theoretical research enabled me to study the nature of the comic and its forms. At first glance, it may not seem that any theory of the comic is needed in everyday life. This is false because a good theory is important not only from a theoretical and cognitive standpoint but also from a practical, applied perspective. Humorous and satirical literature, comic plays and films, variety shows and the circus are very popular and much appreciated in Russia. Our society supports them because they represent satirically all the flaws of our daily life that we have not eliminated but that art helps us eradicate.
One of the main requirements of any kind of modern art consists in the unity of both its ideological and artistic aspects. We cannot imagine high ideological principles without high artistic merit, and vice versa. However, this unity is not always observed in artistic practice. One reason for this discrepancy is authors’ disregard for artistic form proper, they do not perfect it, nor do they put all the finishing touches to it. In the domain of comedy, this is reflected in the lack of understanding of the specific rules of the comic and therefore in the inability to use them. Yurenev is right when he thinks that one of the reasons for this is ‘the neglect of the rules, the techniques, the methods, and the devices that help masters of comic art make their audiences laugh’ (1964b, 29).
Certain theoretical premises frequently adhered to by authors, publishers, editors, producers, directors, critics, and reviewers hamper the development of satire in this country. One is the theory of the two types of comic that was discussed elsewhere in connection with issues related to the history of aesthetics. That theory’s current manifestations, which were not mentioned, must now be discussed, since it has become very popular here even though it has evolved in part from nineteenth-century aesthetics and continues a specifically bourgeois approach.
I remind my readers once again that in bourgeois aesthetics this theory assumes that two types of the comic exist – the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ – both of which ought to be studied. The ‘low’ types of comic are perceived as depicting shallow, vulgar buffoonery for the entertainment of the uneducated masses. This type of comic is considered to be outside the domain of the beautiful and is unlikely to be studied in aesthetics. Even so, this approach has been modified today, as the comic of satirical character and the laughter associated with it are now considered to be a high type. In this context, laughter is ideological, important, and necessary. Another type, the comic of humorous characters, is not connected with satire, and the laughter it causes has no social or ideological dimension. It is superficial, occurs naturally, and is farcical – that is, it is a ‘low’ form. According to this theory, satire and humour are different phenomena; thus the two are often contrasted.
It is true that laughter can be satirical or not. But all other statements related to this theory are wrong. The first error consists in separating satire from humour on the grounds that they are supposedly based on different types of comic. In fact, a systematic study of the comic in both satirical and non-satirical works leads us to conclude that the comic techniques are identical in both cases. This theory robs satire of some of its means. Advocates of the theory of the two types of comic make an elementary error of logic when they do not distinguish between ends and means. Satirical exposure is an end, whereas the arsenal of comic techniques is a means, an instrument that helps achieve this end. In this respect, the title of Nikolayev’s (1962) book is very appropriate: Laughter as a Weapon of Satire. When we substitute the word ‘comic’ for the word ‘laughter,’ the meaning does not change but becomes more precise. The comic is a means, while satire is an end; the comic can exist outside the domain of satire, but satire cannot exist outside the comic.
Those who support this premise also err when they state that simple, common, non-satirical laughter has no social importance. Borev is part of this movement, and in his book on the comic he sharply contrasts the two types by using the notions ‘the comic’ and ‘the funny.’ Hegel and others used these terms in the past, whereas Borev incorporated the public and the social dimensions in this distinction. The comic has social significance; it is an aesthetic notion; it can have pedagogical importance. The funny, by contrast, is an extra-aesthetic category, a natural or elementary one that has neither pedagogical nor social importance. It is ‘farce, clownery, buffoonery, playing the fool’; ‘It is the most primitive form of laughter’ (1957, 34). However, when examining Borev’s arguments, we find that he has to impose a number of limitations that actually invalidate his theory. For example, regarding what he refers to as ‘elementary laughter,’ he has to admit: ‘This kind of laughter has almost no social value’ (34). The words ‘almost no’ mean that it nevertheless has it to a certain extent and in certain cases. The notion ‘almost’ is not scientific, either. If the ‘low’ type of comic can still have and really does have a social colouring, then we must see exactly when, under what circumstances, and to what extent this type of comic can take on a social tinge. Clowning is mentioned in this connection. Borev objects to it but at the same time states: ‘At the Russian circus, clowning is becoming a weapon of satirical exposure’ (35). What should have been the basis of the reasoning is being expressed here. Clowning, along with other types of ‘low’ or ‘superficial’ comic, is a means, while exposure is an end. Borev is also forced to admit the presence of farcical elements or ‘low’ types of comic in highly artistic works. He puts it as follows: ‘Artists very frequently use elementary comic for making the main comic situation more profound, more pointed and for showing comic characters. Let us take, for example, Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky’s fall during the first conversation between the town governor and Khlestakov at the inn’ (34).1
The idea that elementary comic serves to deepen comicality is unlikely to gain many followers. We could speak here about enhancing rather than deepening. Borev (1957) goes even further in his compromises, calling the two types of comic ‘the naturally comical’ and ‘the socially comical.’ But then he suddenly writes: ‘A monkey’s funny grimaces, a puppy’s amusing behavior are not naturally comical’ (27). There is always ‘some social content’ in them, but he does not say what is socially comical in the grimaces of a monkey, and he tries to determine what the reader should or should not laugh at. He is quite correct, though, when he writes: ‘Russian literature needs laughter that reinforces our Russian order through criticizing flaws and eradicating vices’ (112). But there is something essential lacking here: satire should be comical, funny, and if it is not, it does not fulfil its social function as it does not provoke the appropriate response from the reader or the listener. If this is so, the devices for achieving a comic effect should be carefully studied, for the theory of satire cannot exist outside the theory of the comic, which is its main means.
The theory of two types of comic is usually accompanied by the theory of the aesthetic and non-aesthetic comic, which is far from being unanimously accepted. There exists a point of view quite opposite to Borev’s; for example, Limantov (1959, 29) writes: ‘The comic in art is a reflection of the comic in life.’ Yurenev says more or less the same thing: ‘The art of comedy is based on the comic that exists in life’ (1964b, 7). That laughter in real life does not belong to the domain of aesthetics is nominally true. But aesthetics that artificially separates itself from real life will inevitably be abstract, as was argued above. Roughly speaking, this point of view can be stated as follows: If, for example, a person carries a paper bag with apples in it and suddenly falls down so that the apples roll all over the place, then this is not funny. But if it happens on a stage or in a comic film, it already involves aesthetics. In this case it will not be funny but comical; however, the comic here is ‘low,’ ‘superficial,’ and devoid of ideology. If a bureaucrat or even a priest or some other person with flaws falls down, this causes a high form of laughter: flaws and weaknesses are being exposed. This is criticizing laughter that has some idea or ideology behind it. The examples above are different in some respects and similar in others. The facts are common to all of them, though they differ in terms of the sphere in which the facts occur or are shown. If we are to solve the problem of the comic, this notion is of primary importance.
Other theorists have reiterated Borev’s idea that the funny is an art form of little value, whereas the comic has value. According to Limantov (1959, 29), ‘it is when the funny is filled with some social content that it becomes comical.’ ‘In addition to the elementary comic, there is another type, the public and social comic representing contradictions that exist in real life involving deep processes that occur in human society,’ writes Nikolayev (1962, 22). The same idea is found in some textbooks. Dealing with the issue of the development of comedy, Abramovich wrote about how comedy targets ‘either the superficial comic or social topics’ (1961, 330). In my opinion, however, the social and the so-called superficial are not mutually exclusive, at least in classical Russian comedy.
To summarize, in Russian works on aesthetics there is a trend towards distinguishing between satire and humour. According to this approach, satire and humour contain different types of comic and have different social significance. Comedies that lack satire have even been declared reactionary; for example, Abramovich writes that ‘a purely entertaining comedy was a means used by reactionary groups of authors to lead the audience away from daily problems of social life and to deprive it of the ideological and moral pathos inherent in it’ (300). If, having read these lines, a student starts to think them through carefully, then he or she will have to class Shakespeare’s comedies – for example, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, and Much Ado About Nothing – in the category of reactionary works; and strictly speaking, all of his comedies, as well as those of many other classic authors, will appear reactionary.
Ideas about the inadmissibility and harmful impact of entertaining comedy – and from this perspective, about the contrast between satire and humour – are rejected not only by many theorists but also by practitioners of comic art (e.g., directors and actors). Belinsky writes in his article ‘Razdelenie poezii na rody i vidy’ [Division of Poetry into Genera and Species] that satire ‘should be based on the most profound humour’ (1953–6, V:60). He expresses this even more definitively in another article, ‘Obshchee znachenie slova “literatura”’ [The General Meaning of the Word ‘Literature’], when he writes that humour is ‘the most powerful weapon of the spirit of negation that destroys the old and prepares the new’ (V:645). Elsberg (1958, 282) was certainly correct when he wrote that ‘the theory contrasting satire and the comic and laughter has long been outdated. Various manifestations of the comic and its entire color spectrum always serve the main critical/accusatory purposes of satire.’ In V laboratorii smekha [In the Laboratory of Laughter], Vulis staunchly objects with very convincing arguments to contrasting satire with humour: ‘Such a drastic and categorical differentiation of satire and humour is hardly justified’ (1966, 18). He made the following argument against contrasting them: ‘However great the difference between a common joker and a satirist happens to be, comicality created by them follows approximately the same pattern’ (13). The word ‘pattern’ here is probably not quite exact, but the idea itself is true.
The idea of denying the social significance of simple, ingenuous, and joyful laughter has no support either. Under our living conditions, common joyful laughter – especially collective laughter – definitely has social significance. We should speak in defence of all kinds of ingenuous mirth: folk theatre, circus, variety shows, cinema, clowns and clownings. Clowns who make a crowd of many thousands laugh simultaneously and joyfully, so that people leave the circus happy and content, perform a very definite and useful social function. We know from Gorky’s memoirs that Lenin thought very highly of the art of clowning. When they visited a democratic music hall in London together, ‘Vladimir Ilyich laughed willingly and infectiously when he watched eccentric clowns; he was oblivious to anything around him’ (1969, 4:515). Even if joyful laughter is not satirical, it is socially useful and necessary because it causes cheerfulness and creates a good mood, thus raising one’s vitality. Lunacharsky2 (1920) wrote:
I often hear laughter. I live in a starving and cold country that hasn’t recovered from a devastating war, though I often hear laughter. I see laughing faces in the streets, I hear crowds of workers and soldiers laugh during lively plays or amusing comic films. I also heard rolling laughter at the front, several miles from where bloody battles were going on. This indicates that we have a major reserve of strength within us since laughter is a sign of strength. It is not only a sign of strength but strength itself […] it is a sign of victory.
It is not necessary to discuss the types of laughter, ‘elementary,’ ‘superficial,’ ‘low,’ or ‘aesthetic,’ ‘high,’ that the soldiers enjoyed several miles from the front. Presumably, it was the ‘elementary’ type. ‘The whole world will stand for the one who amuses people,’ a proverb says. There are a number of similar sayings3 about the importance of laughter as an instrument of struggle, but it is also important as a manifestation of cheerfulness that stimulates vital forces. ‘What has become ridiculous, cannot be dangerous’ (Voltaire). ‘To make something ridiculous means striking at the very vital nerve’ (Lunacharsky). ‘Good laughter makes one’s soul healthier’ (Gorky 1969, 4:124). ‘If a person does not understand a joke he is hopeless and you know that you are not dealing with a real intellect, even if he happens to be the smartest man in the world’ (Chekhov).
Ilyinsky speaks rather harshly about ideological and non-ideological laughter, but he does not contrast or belittle humour at the expense of satire. ‘Comedy cultivates dignity in the Russian person,’ he says boldly. He clearly, unambiguously, and straightforwardly speaks about the rights of lofty civil comedy: ‘All forms and types of comic are needed, all the genres of the art of comedy’; ‘To criticize a vaudeville for being superficial or a joke for not teaching an important lesson in life, to struggle with humour in a humorous work seems to me to be the greatest of all hypocrisies.’4 He does not say this to overthrow ideologically charged comedies but to justify ‘the instrument of laughter,’ to place it at the service of society. However, to negate theoretically the intrinsic value of the comic creates difficulties not only for actors but also for directors, as it paralyzes their creative ability. ‘I strongly believe,’ Akimov5 (1966, 357) writes, ‘that our art theorists have reached such a complete deadlock on the issues of comedy that even if a hundred talented comedians were born now they would not have the slightest chance of making their way to the audience […] through the crowds of eggheads at the cradle of art.’
These sorts of statements, however, hardly influence advocates of the strict distinction between satire on the one hand and humour on the other. For example, the publisher’s foreword to a volume of short stories by the Turkish humorist Aziz Nesin (1966, 2) states: ‘Aziz Nesin’s short stories are entertaining, witty, and most important, they are permeated with public spirit and are keenly social.’ This author’s success is explained mainly in terms of acuteness and topicality. But if acuteness, topicality, and public spirit are of foremost importance, what then is less important? Apparently, being entertaining and witty. In other words the comic and its artistic devices are less important. The author of this foreword expresses quite a common view, namely, that there is something ‘more important’ in any work of art (which in his opinion is the ideological aspect of its content), and something ‘less important’ (artistic quality and form). This is not my own view: what is important is high artistic merit in the realization of a lofty idea. A work of low artistic merit or no artistic merit at all does not contribute to disseminating and strengthening the ideas expressed in it. Only a real work of art can, for to be convincing ideologically, a piece of writing must first of all be convincing as a work of art. The higher the quality, the stronger the ideological influence. It is not enough, however, to criticize a literary work for its failure; a theorist should point out at least some specific errors so that they are not duplicated. In many cases humorists and satirists make mistakes because they do not know or do not understand the nature of the comic and its techniques. Several examples will serve to illustrate this.
As was mentioned above, laughter is like an explosion and cannot last long. The processes that take place in either the mind or the perceptions of the laughing person were examined earlier. Laughter begins unexpectedly for the laughing person, though it can be prepared in some way, and a phenomenon that causes it for the first time does not when repeated. A number of artistic norms follow from these propositions, for example, the requirement of brevity. The most common mistake made by authors of humorous tales is that their works are too lengthy, and critics remarked a long time ago that humour is incompatible with longueurs. Both critics and theorists of aesthetics frequently raise this issue; for example, Jean Paul Richter writes in his Vorschule der Ästhetik: ‘Brevity is the soul and body of wit, and even wit itself’ (1813, 2. Abteilung, IX. Programm, §45). Modern Russian and foreign aesthetics also address this issue: ‘Brevity in satire is not even the sister of talent but talent itself, its essence and, moreover an indispensable condition for it.’ ‘The power of a humorous story lies in its brevity. It should be compressed, like a mainspring […] Verbosity is the bane of our humorous literature, though not only of it.’
Longueurs sometimes consist in repeating different versions of the same technique or the same comical episode several times, and this is why a brief funny story makes one laugh only for the first time and fails on the second, as Hartmann (1958, 364) writes: ‘Once […] the climax of the comic is reached one should not linger too long. The act of falling down should not happen a second time after it has already occurred.’ Satirical folktales are always short and funny. Chekhov was a master of the comical short story; there is not a single longueur in all the volumes of his works. The same can be said about many foreign authors, for example, O. Henry. But when pursuing comicality and searching for the means to strengthen the comic effect, some contemporary authors resort to repetition, so that instead of strengthening the comic effect they end up weakening it and blunting the satirical sting. The following example illustrates this. A short story titled ‘A Medical Tale’ appears in Nesin’s volume mentioned above. The narrator’s uncle, who is represented as a rich miser, develops pain in his intestines but cannot tell exactly where. An acquaintance recommends a professor who is known to work wonders, and the professor declares that the patient has a stomach ulcer. An operation reveals that this is not the case. ‘“Nevertheless,” he (the doctor) added, “the fee received from the patient should be earned. Why waste the work?” And he cut out half of my uncle’s stomach’ (1966, 56). The whole story up to this point is only two pages long and is truly comical. Its ideological content, which is a satire on the paid medical service and on money-grubbing doctors with poor medical skills, does not raise any objections from the characters, even though this mercantile aspect of medicine is a major evil that paves the way for abuse. Now would be the time to devise a comical and unexpected ending for the story, but the author does not, and repeats the episode of the unfortunate operation nine more times:
1 Another doctor mistakenly diagnoses a kidney disease and ablates one of the kidneys.
2 His calluses are removed.
3 Then an alleged inflammation of the cecum is diagnosed, and it is cut off.
4 The next doctor cuts out part of the intestines after mistakenly diagnosing volvulus.
5 His tonsils are taken out.
6 An endocrinologist half-emasculates the patient.
7 All his body hair is shaved, including his eyebrows.
8 All his teeth are extracted.
Each of these operations is described in identical terms. The reader soon gets tired and no longer laughs at the plot of the story. If anything, he or she is more inclined to laugh at the author. At long last the comical ending takes place.
9 The patient goes to Paris where a French doctor finds the real reason for the illness: a bristle from a toothbrush has got stuck in the patient’s throat. The bristle is taken out and the patient recovers.
In addition to the main drawbacks – lengthiness and repetition – there are other violations of the norms of the comic in this story, which will be raised later. ‘Attempts to sustain the comic effect, destroy it,’ Hartmann (1958, 634) stated quite correctly.
It is funny when foreigners mispronounce words. But when this is done over several pages (and these cases exist), you want to throw the book into a corner. By the way, the English, Germans, French, and others mispronounce Russian words in different ways. Authors often do not know this and mercilessly make foreigners distort Russian speech in any which way over several pages. This provokes vexation in readers instead of laughter. This is a good time to mention a mistake that teachers of foreign languages sometimes make when they force their students to learn a great number ofjokes and funny stories. One or two jokes enliven the lesson and arouse their students’ flagging attention, but when reading jokes becomes systematic, they sometimes do not grasp the point immediately, and this tires them even more than grammar lessons. It is possible to tolerate two or three jokes in a row and even benefit from them, but it is impossible to endure ten or fifteen of them.
What was said about prose also applies to drama. The spectator should not be kept in a state of laughter over a lengthy period of time as the range of feelings aroused needs to be diversified. This applies both to comic films and to theatrical comedies, where the audience can be kept smiling but not laughing continuously. Yurenev (1964a, 227) writes: ‘The audience gets tired of laughing all the time. Before laughing again, they should experience other feelings for a while: pity or disappointment, compassion or anxiety, curiosity or fear. After that, they are ready to laugh, enjoy themselves, feel happy again.’ In practical classes on the theory of comedy, in amateur theatrical groups, or in seminars for novice writers, analysing a comedy by Ostrovsky (or any other author) from this angle to determine the degree of his skill is highly recommended. This author and other major playwrights knew, felt, and understood intuitively what is stated here in theory.
Brevity, however, is not an absolute norm that pertains only to humorous tales, jokes, and short stories, as long humorous narrative works do exist. Do they violate the norms of brevity? To answer this question it is necessary to examine the composition of these types of works, paying attention to the techniques used. We can remark here that narrative works and dramatic ones have a different structure. There is no single comical intrigue that is developed from beginning to end in long narrative works. One compositional approach that has been known in world literature for a very long time has the hero go on travels. This principle can be traced, for example, back to Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, in which the hero meets up with the most diverse adventures. The character of the adventures depicted can vary depending on the era, the national culture, the author, and the nature of his aspirations and talents. While the basic principle remains uniform, great variety is possible; for example, completely unrelated brief comical episodes with no external connection can be strung together and their sequence changed.
Folk books based on fragmented folklore plots that had been pieced together about the adventures of Till Eulenspiegel and also about those of seven Swabians were created in the late Middle Ages in Germany. This also applies to a large extent to the adventures of Baron Münchausen and this compositional principle in its pure form underscores Don Quixote. The composition of Dead Souls is based on the hero’s travels, and two novels by Ilf and Petrov, The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf, can be classed in this category. Episodes seem to be disconnected and happening at random, but this does not destroy the internal unity of the whole work, which is achieved in a variety of ways. In these novels, comical episodes should always be brief and the work as a whole not too long. Dead Souls is a brief work, and the reader never gets tired of it. The same cannot be said about the great Don Quixote; as a rule the average modern reader stops reading that novel after reaching its second part. Cervantes’s contemporaries had more free time than we do today. However, Ilf and Petrov’s novels are also characterized by some prolixity.
Another principle that can underlie comical or humorous novels is the arrangement of the action in time. When the action is based on the hero’s travels, time is certainly present, but is not part of the core that determines the course of the narrative. Time-based composition is found in novels of a biographical nature, in narratives about the course and events of the hero’s life. Spanish picaresque novels such as Lazarillo de Tormes can serve as an example. They tell the story of a servant who changes masters but always fools them, moving from one town to the next. He encounters various adventures and unexpected troubles along the way and in taverns but always manages to come out safe. Those occasional travels of the hero are not the core of the novel. Grimmelshausen’s Sim-plicissimus [The Greatest Simpleton], about the life and adventures of a soldier during the Thirty Years’ War, is a typical comic novel of this kind. Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Schweik can serve as a brilliant modern example of a comical novel. The comicality of these works is based not only on comical episodes but also on the main hero, who is a resilient commoner, a great sceptic about social norms, and a keen observer through whose eyes the author reveals life. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is also built on such a sequence of episodes. Comical and satirical novels with historical or pseudo-historical content also exist, for example, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The History of a Town. However, the principles of stringing episodes corresponding to the stages of the hero’s travels and to periods of time are not mutually exclusive. A brilliant example of a combination of these principles is Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers. His heroes travel but they also make long stopovers where different adventures await them, some of which take the form of complicated amorous intrigues that end up happily in marriage.
Although not only brief but also long humorous narrative works exist, they always consist of a sequence of short episodes externally linked to one another. In these works there is no beginning or progression of the plot; action does not develop but unravels and the story can end at any moment. The story about Till Eulenspiegel ends with the death of the hero; Don Quixote dies reconciled and pacified; the Pickwick Club is disbanded. In Dead Souls, Chichikov leaves without achieving his aims and without being completely unmasked. Inspired by the success of their works, authors sometimes publish sequels. After The Adventures of Tom Sawyer came The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Tom Sawyer Detective. Having killed Ostap Bender in The Twelve Chairs (and they were sorry about that afterwards), Ilf and Petrov revived him for their new novel The Little Golden Calf.
In this respect, the techniques of humorous narrative works differ drastically from those of drama, where the plot must have a starting point, followed by a conflict, a narrative development, and a resolution. Episodes of a narrative work of the type being analysed can be rearranged, which is impossible to do with the acts of a good comedy. Gogol’s genius allowed him to develop one of the two anecdotes given to him by Pushkin into a narrative and the other into a comedy. In Dead Souls, Chichikov travels and this helps the progression of the narrative. In The Government Inspector the entire action takes place in one town; it unravels quickly and comes to a conclusion, the complete exposure of the involuntary trickster and the stupidity of those who trusted him. This is a typically theatrical dramatic composition.
This difference is more or less clear. The question however is this: What should the technique in a comic film be for it to become a work of art? Does film belong to the genre of drama or to that of narrative? Film directors have taken an interest in this question. Some scholars contend that a well-composed plot is necessary for a comic film, while others do not. Yurenev belongs to the first group of theorists: ‘The absence of a definite plot poses great difficulties for a script writer, a director, and an actor’; ‘The conviction of some comedy writers (authors of comic films) that a comedy should not necessarily be linked to a dramatic plot (the plot that presupposes action) is a major mistake’ (1964a, 245–6). Yurenev errs here, for he extends the principles of theatrical and stage comedy to comic film. Nobody will deny that a comic film with a well-constructed, well-developed, and logical plot can exist. But resources in the cinema are greater than in the theatre. A complete and integral plot is obligatory on the stage, with its limited number of acts or scenes, where the same settings and the same scenery appear several times. By contrast, on the screen different places of action, from small rooms to mountaintops to landscapes of all the countries of the world, can be shown in rapid sequence; numerous expected and unexpected distinctive lively episodes can be strung together, and action of any duration and complexity can be shown. For film the presence of a self-contained plot is not an aesthetic law, nor is it for long and humorous narratives. Broader possibilities for both action and setting constitute an advantage cinema has over theatre that should not be neglected. A spectator watching a comic film does not necessarily demand strict logic, neither does the comical nature of an action. Spectators want to see, to laugh, and to think about what they have seen, and they are justified in their instinctive expectations. Don Quixote or The Little Golden Calf could be made into a movie, but an attempt to stage them would not succeed. Massenet’s opera Don Quixote contains just a few episodes and gives no idea of Cervantes’s great work; on the contrary it distorts it, though the music and the staging are pleasant to listen to and watch. The same is true of Minkus’s ballet of the same work. Cervantes’ novel provided a basis for a different genre of art. On the other hand, the triumph of comic films such as Volga-Volga, in which the plot line is rather loose, clearly shows that there is a major difference between the principles of a theatrical comedy and those of a comic film, and that aesthetic principles of one genre cannot be applied mechanically to another. Puppet theatre occupies an intermediate position between theatre and cinema, for it has more means than a theatre of actors but fewer than the cinema. The Little Golden Calf was a failure on the stage, but it was a success in puppet theatre, as the characters did not conflict with the types shown in the novel. The play was much weaker than the novel and could not be a substitute for it since it did not show all the richness and subtlety of the author’s ideas.
Continuing this study of long comical narratives, we have to show what constitutes their content, apart from funny episodes. When narratives are purely fantastic (Münchausen), amusement is their main content and objective. Long realistic works are of a different nature and their style makes it possible to create broad canvases that artistically depict reality as seen by the author. Spanish picaresque novels show real life in seventeenth-century Spain quite well. Simplicissimus can be a source for studying the customs and way of life of Central Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. The epigraph of the novel is a poetic version of the Latin saying ridendo dicere verum (to tell the truth while laughing), which can be traced back to one of Horace’s satires: ‘I liked it this way – to tell the truth with laughter.’ It should also be mentioned that when creating Dead Souls, Gogol set himself the same objective. We should bear in mind however that the comic does not make it possible to draw a complete picture of life, as a major comic novel always shows only flaws rather than positive aspects of life which cannot be comical, as was demonstrated above. The comical tinge in these works is always satirical, and this explains the attacks that Gogol was subjected to in his time.
With respect to qualities, a problem related to the existence of the fantastic and the realistic – the two main styles of comical narration or dramatic representation – has not been investigated and must now be discussed. The terms are tentative, but the laws of nature can be broken in the fantastic in a way that is impossible in the realistic. Even so, both styles have the right to exist. Fantasy underlies, for example, the stories of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, the plots of which were borrowed from Ukrainian folklore. The only exception is the strongly realistic story ‘Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt.’ The realistic style also prevails in ‘Mirgorod,’ ‘Old World Landowners,’ and ‘The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich.’ Gogol later created The Government Inspector and Dead Souls, in the process becoming one of the founders of Russian realism. An author is free to choose this or that style of narration. But is it possible to mix them? This is one of the most difficult questions in applied aesthetics. A study of the classics shows that such a mixture is basically possible: Gogol’s ‘The Nose’ is an example. When examining how the events are narrated, we realize from the beginning that they are of a mixed nature and that the reader expects nothing more. The barber Ivan Yakovlevich, who is described quite realistically, while having breakfast suddenly finds a nose in a loaf of fresh bread. That is how the story begins and the style is determined from the onset.
Saltykov-Shchedrin was a master of the fantastic comic that was also quite realistic. We will mention here his Tales and, from a different perspective, The History of a Town. The comic fantastic is combined with a completely realistic narrative tone – a mixture that constitutes his basic style – and the reader immediately understands this. In German literature, Hoffmann was a master of mixing the two styles. When can a mixture of fantasy and realism be considered artistic? It is artistic when it is offered from the very start and when the reader clearly understands this from the first lines. In fantasy, realistic insertions are also possible and can be artistic, as, for example, in Gogol’s Evenings. The opposite will not be artistic; fantastic and improbable details should not be introduced into a work that began in a completely realistic manner and that is perceived as such by the reader. According to satirists, these insertions should strengthen comicality, but readers perceive them as artificial and unnatural absurdities that undermine the narrative. Therefore the style should not change abruptly, forcing readers to adjust their initial perceptions. This transition is possible in tragic works but not in comic ones. ‘Viy,’ ‘The Overcoat,’ and ‘The Portrait’ all begin realistically, but then readers are suddenly launched into a world of unreality (Akaky Akakievich turns into a ghost) and the frightful and tragic side of the narrative is revealed to them. No transitions of this kind are found in Gogol’s comical works as they would decrease and perhaps even destroy the comic effect.
Satirists inject their stories with all kinds of improbable things in an effort to make the reader laugh. One example is Ryklin’s realistic story ‘Please,’ whose hero is called N.N., a name that is hardly appropriate for humorous works, since it is a kind of abstraction instead of a reality and creates discomfort, especially when the story is read aloud. This name is not comical in light of what has already been said about comical names, but this is secondary. N.N. is walking through a district of rural cottages, then we read: ‘N.N. stumbled a couple of times. Having noticed this, the nearly new moon jumped from behind tree-tops and illuminated the path he was on’ (1963, 99). In this case an unexpected mixture of the realistic and the fantastic stifles comicality. There is also some syntactic confusion; for example in the words ‘the […] moon […] illuminated the path he was on,’ the reader will mistake the pronoun ‘he’ as a substitute for the subject ‘moon,’ which obviously was not intended by the author.6
A frequently occurring mistake consists in the inability to keep within the boundaries of comic exaggeration. No school of aesthetics or poetics can specify the limits within which exaggerations are possible, because this is a matter of talent, instinct, and a sense of proportion. The boundaries are different for realistic and for fantastic comicality. Great exaggerations are possible in fantastical works, then they become grotesque, which happens in Rabelais. However, in a realistic style a comic effect can be achieved only if the object of the narration, though exaggerated, is still possible. The comic effect is destroyed when this limit is overstepped. Any experienced reader will always sense the unnatural character of this exaggeration. Nesin’s ‘A Medical Story,’ which I have already mentioned, is a prime example. The patient experiences pain in his intestines and undergoes several senseless operations, which fail to cure him. Finally, a doctor is found in Paris who extracts a toothbrush bristle that has stuck in his throat, thus curing the patient of his intestinal pains, which had lasted for many years. Throughout the story a series of ineffective operations are described, which are intended to make the reader laugh at incompetent doctors. The final episode, being quite unexpected, is supposed to cause laughter. But this ending is not funny, because of its absurdity and improbability. It is not necessary to be a doctor to understand that a bristle stuck in the throat cannot cause intestinal pain over many years. Improbable absurdities are quite appropriate and funny in Baron Münchausen’s stories but not in realistic stories. Among other things, they create incongruities related to the author and not to the character. As a result, the author himself unintentionally becomes ridiculous as the situations he is describing are totally impossible in reality, hence they are neither comical nor artistic.
Mark Twain’s short story ‘How I Edited an Agricultural Paper’ is another example of inappropriate exaggeration. A person who knows nothing about agriculture is the editor of the newspaper. He thinks that turnips grow on trees, that guano is a bird, that the pumpkin is a variety of orange, that ganders spawn, etc. An extraordinary number of misunderstandings happen in the story, and their accumulation over several pages tires the reader and does not cause laughter. The satirical idea is disclosed at the end of the story when somebody criticizes the editor for not knowing the subject and he replies: ‘I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man’s having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper’ (1953, 43). This ending is certainly witty but does not save the story as a whole from being inartistic because the author remains oblivious to the acceptable limits of comic exaggeration.
Some humorists also make this mistake. Belinsky wrote a great deal about naturalness and plausibility as necessary conditions for the comic, conditions that are not always observed. Ilf and Petrov mention two competing undertaker’s offices, which the authors name ‘Nymph’ and ‘Welcome!’ These names are not perceived as comical because they are completely improbable and perhaps even impossible. One can’t help but recall that in Leningrad, on Marat Street, there was an undertaker’s office called ‘Eternity,’ which continued to exist for several years. Real life provides material that no author can devise at the desk and he must develop the power of observation and be able to reproduce those observations skilfully.
This raises the question of language, about which so much has been written from different perspectives that brevity is called for here. When people retell a comedy or a humorous story in their own words, it stops being funny. Therefore, in verbal art, language is not simply a shell, but constitutes a unity with the entire work. One should distinguish between the author’s voice and those of the characters in the narrative. Chapter 4 of Dead Souls begins as follows: ‘Driving up to the tavern, Chichikov ordered a stop for two reasons. On the one hand, so that the horses could rest, and on the other, so that he could have a little snack and fortify himself’ (Gogol 1997, 59). This is the author’s voice: there is nothing comical here and the style is simple, natural, and straightforward. ‘And what a philanderer Kuvshinnikov is. If you only knew! He and I went to nearly all the balls. There was one girl there so decked out, all ruche and truche and devil knows what not […] I just thought to myself: “Devil take it!” But Kuvshinnikov, I mean, he’s such a rascal, he sat himself down next to her and started getting at her with all these compliments in the French language […] That’s what he calls “going strawberrying”’ (64). So says Nozdryov, whom Chichikov happens to meet in the tavern. This leads us to conclude that in his work an author should not rush to make readers laugh.
I am looking through the first book of humorous stories that I can find. One of them begins: ‘Let us suppose first. Suppose that this unusual thing, one might say an occurrence that occurred by chance, took place in the city of X.’ This is the author’s voice, which is specifically meant to make the reader laugh immediately. This deliberately poor narration, however, is not funny at all because it is clear to the reader that the beginning is artificial and unnatural. Besides, the author is obviously eager to guard himself from criticism for the events he is about to narrate; he is admitting that his story is improbable before the reader or the critic notices. A secret hope shines through this: perhaps if the author admits that his story is improbable, the reader will say that it is not.
It is not necessary to make further recommendations here. The examples analysed show that the author’s voice should be simple and natural. It can be witty and provoke a smile, but it should be measured and should not try to achieve a comic effect in the very first lines. Characters, on the contrary, should speak figuratively and vividly, and their speech should vary with their situation. Another point should be made: every text needs to be thoroughly reviewed and revised from the perspective of language. The playwright Nevezhin was discouraged by the failure of his plays and sought the help of Ostrovsky, giving him his comedy Old Things in a New Way to edit. Ostrovsky left Nevezhin’s script, cast of characters, and plot development untouched. Clearly, the comedy was not all that bad. But Ostrovsky improved the language of the play considerably: not a single page of Nevezhin’s text was left untouched by his stylistic corrections and artistic refinement. Ostrovsky strengthened the play, making it livelier, more natural, and more suitable for the stage. The characters’ speech became expressive as well as more reflective of their social environment and individuality.
To make a comic character speak naturally, an author needs to know how such people speak in real life; and to learn this, he or she must study carefully the diverse speech of common people over a long period of time. Gogol’s notebooks indicate how persistently he observed the life and speech of all social groups and how he wrote down everything that was important and interesting to him as a writer, especially the names of things. He kept his records in no particular order, which is not important. In his notebooks we find notes about trade and commerce, transactions ‘with all the invectives,’ and names of trees and kinds of wood, along with lists: craftsmen’s guilds, expressions used during card games, peasants’ names for the parts of houses, dogs’ names and the terms used to describe their builds and qualities, everything that concerns hunting with hounds, names of various dishes, imitations of bird and animal cries, etc. It is not important to list everything that Gogol recorded, except to say he made notes not only of the names of things, but also of festivals and customs. He copied out the names of all the ranks at the Department of Public Care, and he wrote down what bribes were taken by public prosecutors and by governors, etc. These records demonstrate how Gogol worked and show an author cannot invent life and all the funny, lively, and picturesque things that exist in it while sitting at a desk in a study. The primary source of the comic is life itself.
Authors do not always realize and understand this, which results in many mistakes that reduce artistic merit and the comic effect leading to artificiality in the text. This can be proved with the help of a simple but very revealing example, namely, how authors name their heroes. The principles of comical names have already been discussed; extending these, the requirement of probability as a condition of the comic should also be applied to names. It does not matter whether the strange nicknames Gogol gives to his heroes really existed, some may have been invented by the author. Even if this is so, they were created according to the pattern of names and surnames that he had heard and that actually exists in both Russian and Ukrainian. Minor exaggerations are acceptable as they strengthen the comic effect. But some authors spin names out of thin air that are not funny, though they sometimes present some external signs of the comic. They are not funny because they are improbable and contradict the very character of the Russian language.
Belinsky was an outstanding critic but had no literary talent. He wrote a sketch, ‘Pedant,’ in which Kartofelin [from the Russian potato] is the hero’s surname. It is funny insofar as deriving names from words denoting edible things is comical for the reasons explained above. Compare Gogol’s Pancake and Zemlyanika [wild strawberry], and the surnames Cherry, Plum, etc. However, the pedant’s surname is not funny because it is based on the botanical, not the popular name of the vegetable. The surname Kartoshkin [potato] would have been funny. Dobrolyubov made a similar mistake when he named one of his heroes Lilienschwa-ger [lily + a kinship term: Schwager = brother-in-law]. The cases where foreign surnames can turn out to be funny have already been analysed. This surname does not make us laugh because it is impossible in any language as it is unnatural and artificial. Can names like Semaphorov, Unitazov [from w.c. pan], Avos’kin [from string-bag], and Paganinsky be considered inspired choices? They do contain some comic elements, but these are neutralized because of their artificial, unnatural, and improbable character. The surname Paganinsky, for example, could be funny as some vowels and consonants are repeated in it. But since it was derived from the surname Paganini, it completely loses its comicality, as there is nothing funny to the Russian ear in the familiar Italian surname Pagani-ni. Moreover, Russian surnames are never derived from Italian ones. The author may have hoped for an association with the root pogany [nasty], but this does not occur because of the difference in spelling.
The midwife Medusa Gorgoner’s name in Ilf and Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs is borrowed from mythology but altered slightly. To grasp its comicality we must know (or look up in a mythological encyclopedia) that Gorgons were mythical female monsters whose appearance and gaze were so dangerous that they killed people. Medusa was such a Gorgon, and by giving a woman the first name Medusa and the surname Gor-goner the authors demonstrated their knowledge of mythology, but the reader does not necessarily know this. Adding the German-Yiddish suffix -er to an ancient Greek name does not make us laugh because it is arbitrary and unnatural (compare it with the midwife Zmeyukina in Chekhov’s works). In spite of all the incredible and improbable names in Gogol’s works, there is not a single case where his hero is given an unnatural name that contradicts real life.
The following can be added to what has already been stated: comedians will succeed only if, when telling a humorous story, they are (or feign being) serious and uninvolved. If a person telling a funny story bursts out laughing without waiting for his listeners to laugh, then they will laugh only out of politeness. This applies to both oral and written narratives, and even when an author feels like laughing he should not immediately show it. The reader should be influenced by the story’s subject matter, not by the author’s mood, which can be discouraging and sometimes even irritating. Chekhov gave the following piece of advice to the author Avilova, who wrote sentimental stories: ‘The more sentimental the situation, the more coldly you should write, and the more sentimental it will turn out. You should not sugar it’ (1974–82, V:177). This also applies to authors of comic works. As Chekhov put it, one should write ‘coldly,’ otherwise one of the key rules of the psychology of laughter will be broken. Strong laughter comes unexpectedly – which is not to deny that unexpectedness can be skilfully prepared – whereas unsuccessful satirists break the rule and begin immediately with colourful language to show that they are writing not a common but a humorous story.
The distance an author keeps in his narrative should have another affect: a satirical work always has a bias, and the more thoroughly it is hidden, the better it will be understood and the greater the aesthetic delight it will cause. And the opposite is also true: the more strongly the bias is emphasized, the weaker the artistic and ideological effect. Fearing that they will be criticized for a lack of ideological commitment, many authors deliberately emphasize the bias. This error is often not of their making, as it is a result of some erroneous principles in modern theory of the comic that demand ideological commitment even at the expense of artistic merit. A moral is appropriate in a fable (though fables often do without one); it is inappropriate in any type of humorous work. Belin-sky mentioned this, warning authors against didacticism. Ershov (1955, 197) contended that ‘it is useful to show the reader the reasons that give rise to negative phenomena.’ Readers of newspaper articles or serious sketches need this, but readers of literary works, especially humorous ones, certainly do not. One should not ‘discuss’ anything with readers, who need to be ‘shown.’ If what has been shown is sufficiently vivid and true, they will reach conclusions on their own.
Reasoning reduces the artistic merit and clarity of works, as can be seen in Ryklin’s excellent short story, ‘Granny Sekleteya.’ The comical heroine is a malicious old woman, a gossip who spreads various prophecies and foolish rumours. The character is both comical and transparent, and what is presented is probable and convincing. The maliciousness of this type is made quite evident, but then the author writes: ‘You should not think that Granny Sekleteya no longer has a credulous audience and that none of the young stick-in-the-muds won’t fall into her web like flies’ (1963, 144). The narrator’s remark, which appears in the middle of the story, undermines comicality as it is not the language of a humorous work but that of an article. On reading the story, the readers should have said this on their own, not the author, and would have, had the author not done it for them. Readers do not like authors preaching; they want to understand things themselves.
Other mistakes too destroy the comic effect. Certain topics can never be comical – for example, murders, vices, various crimes, and moral and physical filth cannot be represented in a comical fashion. We can laugh at fascists when they bring a truckload of balalaikas to an occupied village to try and sell to Russians for a profit, or to exchange them (Zosh-chenko’s short story ‘Good Afternoon, Gentlemen!’). But nobody will think of laughing when they kill people in death camps. Some authors do not have a clear sense of the line between what can or cannot be comical; for example, Ostap’s death in The Twelve Chairs is not at all funny.
To delineate character, a transition from the comic to the disgusting is sometimes made deliberately. Saltykov-Shchedrin did this several times in The Golovlyov Family. His aim was to evoke disgust, and the novel is not comical in those places where he does. It turned out to be difficult to make a screen version of the novel. Yurenev (1964b, 22) notes that ‘in Russian literature, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satire goes beyond the boundaries of comedy. In the film Iudushka Golovlyov, Gardin is not funny but odious and hideous.’ But Iudushka is like this not just in the film, but in the novel as well. Saltykov-Shchedrin deliberately exceeded the boundaries of a comedy.
There is another side to the question of what topics are appropriate for the comic, and in this regard we should usually defend authors against most critics and theorists. Many theorists claim that people’s flaws cause satirical laughter, and there can be no objection to this: it is indisputable that satire by its nature ridicules human flaws. Disputes arise the moment one tries to decide which flaws should become the subject of satire, and many theorists think the major ones should be subjected to ridicule first. These theorists accuse modern authors of ‘concentrating on narrow topics.’ ‘No major satire has yet been written,’ Guralnik writes. In Eershov’s opinion, the authors of Krokodil ‘showed a preference for narrow subjects, for the petty and stagnant world of Philistinism, they did not raise major social questions.’ Nikolayev expresses a similar thought: ‘Minor, insignificant conflicts of no broad social importance far too often underpin satirical short stories, narratives, and even novels.’7
Technically, the authors of these accusations are correct, as our literature frequently ridicules minor flaws, but they are wrong in their understanding and evaluation. The theory of the comic shows that major flaws cannot be subjects of comical representation. Crimes against the state, high treason, and grave criminal offences fall under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Public Prosecutor and a department of criminal investigation, not under comedy and satire. The theory just expressed by these authors is faulty in another sense: it begins with the premise that there are two kinds of flaws, the socially harmful and the socially harmless. There is certainly a grain of truth in this. For example, when a conductor, gracefully bending his torso, rushes to the orchestra with his fists clenched in order to show that they should play fortissimo here, or when he turns his palm to the orchestra showing that they should play lower here (which the musicians already know), when he conducts not only with his body and arms but with his head so that his hair becomes dishevelled, he does not suspect that he is ridiculous. This can give rise to a well-intended caricature but not a satire, as the flaw in this case is totally harmless. But as soon as we actually try to divide flaws into socially harmful and harmless ones, we reach a complete deadlock and find that it is impossible. Guralnik states: ‘No major satire has yet been written.’ But this proves to be wrong when we examine the satirical works of the Civil War or the Great Patriotic War.8 Demyan Bedny9 and Vladimir Mayakovsky (1958) wrote in 1927:
I wanna bursts
Of cannon laughter,
A shred of a red banner
Above.
(Grim Humour, VIII:76).
Mayakovsky, more than anyone else, knew how to rail against both external and internal enemies, the White Guards and the counter-revolution. Satire was also instrumental in the victory over Nazism during the Great Patriotic War. Today it is enough to open any issue of Krokodil and almost any issue of Pravda and other newspapers to see cruel yet apt cartoons. There is absolutely no reason to say that no major satire has been written until now.
But along with this satire, there is and there should be a type of satire aimed at criticizing our daily life and our own flaws. Mayakovsky, who ranted so splendidly against interventionists, was also able to turn his ridicule against flaws in our domestic life during the days of the peaceful construction of socialism. It was no longer wars, armies, or guns that hampered this construction, but thousands of trivial details that are quite imperceptible at first sight, which as a whole can seriously impede the progress of socialism if nobody struggles against them. Mayakovsky created the concept of ‘huge trivial details’ and railed against those details with the same ruthlessness with which he railed against interventionists. His comedy The Bedbug can be seen as an example of militant satire.
In the context of our reality, personal flaws are also social ones, and it is impossible to distinguish between the two. ‘The profiteer and the groveller, the gossip and the slanderer, the grabber and the obscurantist, the litigious fellow and the idler, the drunkard and the profligate gradually and inevitably fall under the jurisdiction of satire,’ notes Yurenev (1964a, 18). Levitin in The Funniest writes this about himself: ‘The author ruthlessly castigates everything that hampers our successful progression and ridicules such vices as money-grubbing, envy, conceit, obsequiousness, and egoism’ (1966, 2). In fact, this list hardly exhausts all the subjects of the book. If we methodically study our humorous and satirical literature and make a list or a catalogue of everything that is ridiculed and reflect on each of these flaws, it becomes evident that they are socially inadmissible. All kinds of unscrupulousness, alcoholism, undue familiarity and hooliganism, callousness towards people and their needs, all sorts of formalism and red tape, low standards of work in all areas and activities from that of the most menial workers up to the top managers who act irresponsibly while holding responsible posts, cannot be allowed and should be stopped by any means. All similar and many other flaws can be the subject of satire, and all of them are social topics.
Authors are frequently accused of depicting phenomena that are not typical of our lives and experience. However, this does not mean that they should not be depicted or that we should not contest them. The notion that a mere handful of cases is not a public evil, that such cases become social only when they begin to spread, is profoundly harmful. Each case must be fought against and exposed without waiting until the disease develops into an epidemic and becomes ‘generalized.’ The frequently heard accusation that satirists focus too strongly on narrow subjects does not stand up to criticism from the point of view of either the theory of the comic or public morals. The problem lies not in the narrowness of the subjects but rather in the artistic merit and truthfulness of their treatment.
It is worth mentioning that satire does not very often reform those at whom it is aimed. If it did so, then all we would have to do to cure alcoholism or hooliganism would be to gather all those afflicted with these illnesses, take them to a theatre or a cinema, and show them a comedy castigating drunkenness and hooliganism. Supposedly they would then leave the theatre sober and well-behaved. This never happens. What, then, is the significance of satire? Satire exerts influence on those who regard these flaws with indifference or indulgence, or who chose to ignore them, or are perhaps oblivious to them. Satire heightens the will to struggle and inspires or strengthens the feeling that the actions represented are inadmissible and worthy of condemnation, thereby helping to strengthen our opposition to them.