Laughing through the Apocalypse: The Comic Structure of Gogol's Government Inspector

Abstract

Nemesis finally overtaking a society that has been trivialized into nothingness, its members shown as deceptive masks pursuing illusory goals. It is a society without the cement of affection, kindness, or loyalty. Gogol's apocalypse-his vision of disaster-is not directed toward some external agency. His world is doomed by its own fragmented and insubstantial nature.18 "Doom," "apocalypse" are strong words, and we may ask whether comedy can bear their weight. A classic definition of comedy reads as follows: "As for Comedy, it is ... an imitation of men worse than the average: worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others."19 The genius of Aristotle's definition is that it is purely formal: it refrains from prescribing a subject for comedy, so that anything may be comicalhypocrisy, pretension, death, slipping on a banana peel, the apocalypse. The key phrase is "not productive of pain or harm to others." Comic actions cannot have serious consequences for the observer. The potential for seriousness must be present-the agents make "mistakes" or possess "deformities" of character that may lead to disasters like those of tragedy. We are concerned for their fate, but at some point in the course of the action the grounds of our concern are removed. Pity and terror and other painful emotions are as much part of comedy as of tragedy; in comedy, however, they are provoked only to be shown as baseless. The agent must resemble us in some ways-otherwise he would be monstrous, not ridiculous. Nevertheless, his error or deformity is so gross as to make him worse than we are. The pity of tragedy is for undeserved misfortune; its terror, for the fate of one like ourselves. In comedy misfortune is shown as deserved; the terror we feel as unwarranted, even if only in retrospect, because the agent is too unlike ourselves. The pity and terror of tragedy are lived through until they resolve in purgation; pity and terror in comedy, since they are shown to be baseless, resolve in a "relaxation of concern."20 Unburdened of 18 Gogol compared the intervention of the government at the end of the play to "inevitable fate in the tragedies of the ancients" which ". . . overtakes crimes.' Sobranie, 4: 158. Apocalyptic expectations were rife in the 1830s in Russia, as society retreated into reaction and obscurantism in defense against revolutionary changes in the West. There was a revival of a prediction that the world would come to an end in 1837, a year after the premiere of The Government Inspector. See Dmitry Cizevsky, "The Unknown Gogol'," Slavonic and East European Review 30 (1952): 476-93. 19 Aristotle Poetics 5. 1449a. 20 Elder Olsen, The Theory of Comedy (Bloomington, Indiana, 1968), pp. 1619, 23, 36-7, 46-7. Olsen's book is an excellent elaboration of the Aristotelian argument. See also Lane Cooper, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy (New York, 1922). Cooper includes comprehensive translations of Aristotle's scattered writings on comedy and much interesting background material. 147 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 05:27:00 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms