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Polichinelle-Pulcinella: the Italian Ancestry of Akaky Bashmachkin

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Polichinelle-Pulcinella: the Italian Ancestry of Akaky Bashmachkin SHINEL '-POLICHINELLE-PULCINELLA: THE ITALIAN ANCESTRY OF AKAKY BASHMACHKIN Olga Partan. College of the Holy Cross The single most famous short story in the whole of Russian literature, "The Overcoat" is also the most widely misunderstood. Simon Karlinsky (135) "Does anything more need to be written about 'The Overcoat'?" (295). Al- though Dmitry Chizhevsky posed this question several decades ago, the an- swer is still a resounding "yes." This article offers a new perspective on "The Overcoat," suggesting that Nikolai Gogol drew on the Italian commnedia del- l'arte character of Pulcinella while creating his quintessentially Russian civil servant, Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin. I explore an Italianate subtext that has not been previously studied and suggest that core elements of the plot and narrative technique, as well as the name and personality of the protagonist, have strong parallels with elements of the commedia del'arte and its famous Pulcinella character, which Gogol was exposed to in Italy prior to writing "The Overcoat." The striking similarities between the Petersburgian Bash- machkin and the Italian Pulcinella illustrate Vladimir Nabokov's perceptive observation that "Rome and Russia formed a combination of a deeper kind in Gogol's unreal world" (Nabokov 1980, 44). While literary scholars have addressed the significance of Italian contexts and subtexts in Gogol's novella Rome and his essays on Italian art and archi- tecture, little attention has been paid to how Gogol's impressions of the Italian performing arts in general, and of the commedia dell'arte in particular, may have influenced his artistic imagination and the poetics of "The Overcoat."' This tendency reflects the well-established critical tradition of analyzing Gogol's oeuvre within either the Ukrainian or Russian cultural context. Despite the diversity of critical approaches to "The Overcoat"- from Boris Eikhen- baum's formalist study to Daniel Rancour-Laferriere's psychoanalytical one- existing scholarship views this story as being rooted within the Russian cultural context. My analysis of Italian themes supplements--rather than contradicts- the previous scholarship, and supports the view that "The Overcoat" is a "kaleidoscope" that is open to a "simultaneity of possible meanings" (Graffy 118, Brombert 53, Fanger 162). Many previous studies have analyzed Gogol's brilliant sense of comedy, his extensive use of grotesque imagery, his unforget- SEEJ, Vol. 49, No. 4 (2005): p. 549-p. 569 549 550 Slavic and East EuropeanJournal table depiction of mask-like human faces, the tragicomic nature of his art, and his verbal virtuosity that heavily relied on local dialects and various puns. Yet little mention has been made of possible affinities between Gogol's oeuvre and the Italian commedia dell'arte, which exhibits similar artistic principles. Fur- thermore, Gogol's playwriting experience and talents in the performing arts made him receptive to the commedia dell'arte's artistic devices and acting techniques that he transposed into literary text. The commedia dell'arte was born in mid-sixteenth-century Italy-with roots going back to Greek and Roman comedies and medieval farces-and had a tremendous impact on the Western artistic imagination in areas such as the performing and visual arts, music, dance, circus, pantomimes, playwrit- ing, and literature. 2 The commedia dell'arte was a unique type of theatrical performance, as it relied on improvisation and the actors' virtuosity because performances were not based on a traditional body of dramatic texts and au- diences did not see the leading actors' faces. The action on stage was based on schematic scenarios that simply summarized the plot, so the performances relied on the actors' improvisation and acting skills. The commedia dell'arte was a synthetic form of the performing arts, since its actors were simultane- ously mimes, acrobats, singers, and dancers who had to entertain the audience while wearing typological costumes and half-masks that left only their mouths uncovered. Therefore, physical expressiveness as well as vocal and verbal skills were essential attributes of the performances. The eighteenth-century Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni, who juxtaposed the improvisational commedia with theater based on literary texts, stated that the commedia dell'arte was purely and distinctly an Italian genre of comedy that no other nation was ever able to imitate (256). Nevertheless, starting from the sixteenth century, Europe was infatuated with the commedia dell'arte, as artists and authors sought to imitate and reinterpret the cominedia, borrowing its masks and adapting them to their national sense of comedy, and reshaping the inventive plots of the Italian scenarios. 3 The famous characters of the corn- media, also known as masks, were based on diverse personality types and were associated with specific Italian regions and cities, representing their typical at- tributes, speech patterns, proverbs, and sayings. For example, Harlequin was a cunning servant from Bergamo, Dottore was a learned fool from Bologna, Pantalone was an old miser from Venice, and so forth (fig. 1). The character of Pulcinella originated in Naples and was known for the duality of his personal- ity, with one side being timid and dull while the other was aggressive and vengeful. The character of Pulcinella was adopted and adapted by different cultures, appearing as Polichinelle in France, Punch in England, and sharing 4 some of his features with the Russian Petrushka puppet. Gogol was fascinated with Italian history and culture from his youth, and his early poetic lines dating from 1829, full of clumsy exaltation, were dedi- cated to Italy: Shlel '-Polichihelle-PPulcihella 551 Figure 1: Commedia dell 'Arte Characters (Nineteenth-century colored lithograph by CGGallina, as reproduced from Oreglia 129. courtesy of Giacomo Oreglia) IlTaTHIA-pocKuoMaN cTpata! I-[ HeoMayCa it cToHeTr u-OCKVeT. OHa BcS3palt, BCApaaxocTi no1:mia, 1iB Het niO6oBb pOCKOumaA BecHyer. (9: 9) Oh, Italy luxurious land, For which my moaning spirit sighs, All full ofjoy, all paradise, Where Love, luxuriant Love vernates. (Nabokov 1944, 9) In 1836, Gogol finally reached the "luxurious land" of his dreams and pro- claimed that Italy was the real homeland of his soulI.5 Gogol lived in Italy for almost ten years between 1836 and 1848, and wrote the final version of "The Overcoat" while living in Rome in the spring of 1841 (Gogol 3: 683, Graffy 3). Gogol may have begun thinking about "The Overcoat" as early as 1834 and started dictating a first draft of the story to Pogodin in July-August of 1839 (Gogol 3: 685).6 With the plot of "The Over- coat" already on his mind, Gogol (by then quite proficient in Italian) was reg- ularly exposed to the high and low spheres of the Italian performing arts, at- tending opera houses as well as street performances and carnival festivities.7 In Italy, Gogol expressed deep interest in Carlo Goldoni's playwriting and the skillful denouements of his comedies, which relied heavily on the commedia dell'arte tradition (Veresaev 301). Moreover, Mikhail Pogodin reminisces that Gogol's friends (and perhaps Gogol himself) viewed his comic talent as akin to that of Goldoni. When celebrating Gogol's birthday in Italy in 1838, his friends gave him a drawing of a theatrical mask and a poem that pro- claimed him to be a Russian Goldoni: 552 Slavic and East European Journal Why are you dozing off? Look, in front of you There is a theater mask lying there, waiting for you. It was abandoned by your famous brother-in-arms, Who still excites Italy With his playful, free laughter: take it, Look at its humorous smile And its honest appearance: Goldoni used to wear it. It becomes you ...8 (qtd. in Veresaev 225) Living in Italy during the 1830s, Gogol must have observed the phenome- nal popularity of the commedia dell'arte character of Pulcinella in both Naples and Rome. The pervasiveness of Pulcinella in Italian popular culture and the arts during this time is vividly illustrated by contemporaneous iconography, periodicals, numerous reminiscences of European travelers, and Antonio Bra- gaglia's richly documented study of Pulcinella's genealogy (see also Oreglia). It is often suggested that the name Pulcinella came from the first performer of the mask: a witty peasant named Puccio D'Aniello. Duchartre cites the leg- end that a traveling sixteenth-century commedia dell'arte troupe was enter- taining peasants in the vicinity of Acerra, near Naples, and met Puccio D'Aniello, a peasant with a huge nose and clever tongue who was invited to join the troupe (217). Puccio D'Aniello immediately achieved great success as an actor, wearing on stage the white linen robe that was the traditional outfit for Acerra's peasants, and his name became shortened to Pulcinella. When Gogol was in Italy, Pulcinella was represented both in miniature as a popular puppet and in life size by actors. Most importantly, his ancient mask was adapted to fit the changing historical and social reality (figs. 2 and 3).9 Gogol unquestionably had multiple encounters with Pulcinella while in Italy, since this character invaded the Roman and Neapolitan cultural scenes at that time: aristocrats and simple people were dressing up in Pulcinella costumes during carnival festivities, forming crowded processions of Pulcinellas; and Roman puppet theaters gave daily performances with Pulcinella puppets in the leading role.10 In an 1834 sonnet, Giuseppe Belli, one of Gogol's favorite Italian satirical poets, mockingly defined the men of Italy as an army of ag- gressive Pulcinellas.n Gogol mentioned Pulcinella in a letter to Maria Balabina written in April of 1837, where he expressed his admiration for the Italian sense of comedy:12 OTo HariOMHHaeT MHie 3KcnpoMT no cniiyalo 3anpemeHRri nanoo icapHaBaaia B flpOmfJOM rogy. B,I 3HaeTe, WTOHrfiHemalero nany no upwruHe ero 6ojimboro Hoca, 3OBYr Hym,ZnRIHenoi0ii, BOT 3TOT 3KcHpoMT: "Oh, questa si ch'e bella! / Proibisce il carnevale Pulcinella!" (11: 142-43) This reminds me of an impromptu on the occasion when the Pope banned the carnival last year.
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