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Satisfying Khlestakov's Appetite: The Semiotics of Eating in The Inspector General
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
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“The belly is the belle of his stories, the nose is their beau.“
Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (1944)The subject of gastronomy—as it touches upon the significance of what, how, and why man eats—has begun to receive increasing attention in recent years, during which time quite a number of books on the history of food and drink have appeared. Scholars, moreover, have demonstrated a heightened interest lately in the anthropological aspects of this topic. Since eating is a human activity that by its very nature encompasses a social, a psychological, as well as a biological dimension, the depiction of fictional meals in literature allows this ritualistic event to be transformed into a narrative sign with vast semiotic possibilities—not only within the world of the literary work itself (intratextually) but also within a broader cultural context (extratextually).
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References
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4. Gogol’ displayed his formidable culinary prowess not only by serving up Italian macaroni and various Ukrainian dishes at dinners, but also by preparing such liquid concoctions as a hot spiced drink calledzhzhenka and a combination of goat's milk and rum called gogol'-mogol', a beverage which might have appealed to Gogol’ not so much for its taste as for its funny-sounding name (echoing his own). For testimonyto his gastronomical obsessions, see Veresaev's Gogol’ v zhizni, pp. 114, 171, 186, 215, 217, 218, 228, 235, 239, 245. Darra Goldstein provides the recipe for gogol'-mogol’ in her highly acclaimed À la Russe: A Cookbook of Russian Hospitality (New York: Random House, 1983): 193. Goldstein's cookbook, incidentally, is filled with very perceptive observations about the use of food and scenes of eating in Russianliterature.
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7. Veresaev, Gogol’ v zhizni, p. 192.
8. Opinions differ on the actual cause of his death. See Chizh, V., “Bolezn’ Gogolia,” Voprosy filosofiii psikhologii, kn. 2, torn 67 (1903): 262–313 Google Scholar; kn. 3, torn 68 (1903): 418–468; kn. 4, torn 69 (1903): 647–681; kn. 5, torn 70 (1903): 761–805; and kn. 1, torn 71 (1904): 34–70; Bazhenov, N., “Bolezn’ ismert’ Gogolia,” Russkaia mysl', no. 1 (1902): 132–149 Google Scholar, and no. 2 (1902): 52–71; Tarasenkov, A. T., Poslednie dm zhizni N. V. Gogolia (St. Petersburg, 1857)Google Scholar; and, more recently, Vladimir Adamovid, “Gogolj: Depresija i smrt,” Savremenik 5 (1984): 432–437.
9. Nabokov, Vladimir, Nikolai Gogol (New York: New Directions, 1944): 3 Google Scholar.
10. Gogol “s “Little Russian” predecessor, Vasilii Narezhnyi (1780–1825), for instance, was chastisedfor seating his heroes far too often at table and for describing scenes in which food and drink played such a prominent role. See Chopin, Jean, “Oeuvres de Basile Naréjny,” Revue Encyclopédique 44 (1829): 118 Google Scholar. One critic even suggested that Narezhnyi would be better served by using alcoholic beverages “while “writing rather than “in” his writing. “The writer speaks much too much here about food and drink,” wrotethis same critic in his review of Narezhnyi's The Seminarian. See Blagonamerennyi, chast’ 28, no. 19 (1824): 28. Anton Del'vig noted that, just as Chinese books gave off the aroma of tea, Narezhnyi's novelsgive off the odor of “home-made brew” (varenukha) to the reader. See Sochineniia Barona A. A. Del'viga (St. Petersburg, 1895): 128. The frequent depiction of scenes of merriment in Narezhnyi's novels, wherefood and drink play a large part, led critics to follow the lead of Faddei Bulgarin who dubbed Narezhnyi the “Russian Teniers.” See Literaturnye listki, chast’ 4, nos. 19 and 20 (1824): 49. The significance of the titleis discussed in Danilov's, V. article, “Ten'er v russkoi literature,” Russkii arkhiv 53, no. 2 (1915): 164–68Google Scholar. Gogol “s talent, according to A. V. Nikitenko, was likewise “purely Teniersesque.” See Veresaev, Gogol’ v zhizni, p. 138.
11. Obolensky, Alexander P., Food-Notes on Gogol (Winnipeg: Trident, 1972 Google Scholar and Kolb-Seletski, Natalia M., “Gastronomy, Gogol, and His Fiction,” Slavic Review 29, no. 1 (1970): 35–57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Obolensky, whoopenly eschews any need for a Freudian interpretation of the distinctly oral nature of the pleasures described in the prose of Gogol', concentrates his attention upon the author's use of gustatory imagery as well as uponthe way the personalities of various fictional characters—especially in such a work as Dead Souls—are revealed through the kinds of foods they eat. Kolb-Seletski, on the other hand, does not shy away from a Freudian interpretation. Noting the close and persistent association of food with sex and women in his prose, she asserts that the author, burdened psychologically by a mother fixation, sublimated this desire by turning to food rather than sex for satisfaction.
12. Kott entitled his review, appropriately enough, “The Eating of The Government Inspector “; see Theatre Quarterly 5, no. 17 (1975): 21 -29. A slightly altered version of this essay, entitled “The Author ofComedy, or The Inspector General, ” appears in Kott's book, The Theater of Essence and Other Essays (Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press, 1984): 11–30. This later, revised, essay elaborates more onthe connection between Moliere and Gogol'.
13. “Les mets et les mots: gastronomie et semiotique dans L'Ecole des femmes,” Semiotica 5l (1984): 135. Elsewhere in his article, Tobin notes the irony implicit in the fact that Arnolphe, whose desire is omnivorous and who attempts to “devour” Agnes, is himself “eaten” up in Moliere's play; ibid., p. 139.
14. Brown, Norman, Love's Body (New York: Vintage, 1966): 169 Google Scholar.
15. Gippius, Vasilii, “The Inspector General: Structure and Problems,” in Gogol from the Twentieth Century: Eleven Essays, ed. Maguire, Robert A. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974): 231 Google Scholar
16. Simon Karlinsky examines precisely these features of the play in “The Alogical and AbsurdistAspects of Russian Realist Drama,” Comparative Drama 3, no. 3 (1969): 147–155.
17. Kott, “The Eating of The Government Inspector,” p. 22. “This gastronomical collage,” he adds, “reveals the circulation of goods. “
18. Kott compares Osip to Plautus's slaves, Molière's servants, and Cervantes's Sancho Panza. See “The Eating of The Government Inspector,” p. 22. Roseann Runte examines the use of food in the novels ofAlain-René Lesage and Tobias Smollett, whose heroes are direct heirs to the picaros, Spanish. See “Gil Biasand Roderick Random: Food for Thought,” French Review 50, no. 5 (1977): 698–705.Google Scholar
19. Michael Alpert points out that the anonymous author of Lazarillo is satirizing the traditional Spanishpreoccupation with quedar bien: “to impress, to make a brave showing in the world.” See his introductionto Two Spanish Picaresque Novels, trans. M. Alpert (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 9.
20. Bonnet, Jean-Claude, “Le système de la cuisine et du repas chez Rousseau,” Poétique 22 (1975): 245 Google Scholar. “The question confronting most of the characters in Sue's Les Mystères de Paris and Hugo's Les Miserables, “ James Brown notes, “is not how well they eat but rather whether they will eat at all. The very acquisition of food becomes the primary concern for characters in their novels because it is at a premium. These poor souls subsist at the absolute degri ztro alimentaire.” See Fictional Meals and Their Function inthe French Novel, 1789–1848 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), p. 91.
21. Gippius discusses how “elegant eating” likewise often serves as a “fervor” (rather than a “passion “)for characters in the works of Gogol'. See Gogol', trans. Robert A. Maguire (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1981), p. 131.
22. See, in addition to James Brown's book, his article, “On the Semiogenesis of Fictional Meals, “Romanic Review 69, no. 4 (1978): 322–335.
23. Barthes, Roland, “Lecture de Brillat-Savarin,” in Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme, Physiologie dugout (Paris: Hermann, 1975): 8 Google Scholar.
24. Labardan is a type of cod. “In the very sound of this Russian word there is magnificence andluxury,” notes Kott, who considers labardan a “lush word which is in itself like an enormous fish.” See “The Eating of The Government Inspector,” p. 21. Iurii Ivask asks whether the word labardan might not befor Khlestakov “a symbol of earthly paradise, like Moscow for Chekhov's Three Sisters.” See his “Literaturnyezametki,” Mosty 12 (1966): 175.
25. Popkin, Henry, introduction, in Nikolai Gogol, The Inspector General (New York: Avon, 1976): 8 Google Scholar.
26. Gippius, “The Inspector General: Structure and Problems,” p. 255. Indeed, Nabokov seems quitejustified in calling Khlestakov's lying “the braggadocio of a nincompoop” (Nikolai Gogol, p. 55). Karlinsky calls Khlestakov “a creative but disinterested liar “; see The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 162.
27. Lotman, Iurii, “Gogol's Chlestakov: The Pragmatics of a Literary Character,” in Lotman andUspenskij, The Semiotics of Russian Culture, ed. Shukman, Ann (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984): 188 Google Scholar.
28. Gogol’ seems to have shared Khlestakov's problem. Ivask, who entitles the second part of hisessay “On Gogol': Escape from Loneliness,” argues that “every work by Gogol’ constitutes a new attemptto escape from loneliness.” See “Literaturnye zametki,” Mosty 12 (1966): 172.
29. See Brown, Fictional Meals, p. 204, as well as idem, “Semiogenesis,” p. 328.
30. “Le plaisir oral,” writes Michel Jeanneret, “est aussi une affaire de parole, la bouche est aussi lelaboratoire où se fabrique le discours: manger et parler entretiennent un rapport de solidarité, de similarité. “See “ ‘Ma patrie est une citrouille': Thèmes alimentaires dans Rabelais et Folengo,” in Litérature et gastronomie, ed. Ronald W. Tobin, Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, biblio 17 (Paris, Seattle, Tubingen: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 1985) p. 119.
31. Brown, “Semiogenesis,” p. 328.
32. Ibid., p. 327.
33. Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, trans. Joan Riviere (New York, 1958), pp. 232–233.
34. McLean, Hugh, “Gogol “s Retreat from Love: Toward an Interpretation of Mirgorod,” American Contributions to the Fourth International Congress of Slavicists (The Hague: Mouton, 1958, pp. 225–244 Google Scholar.In his essay, McLean provides what is widely accepted as the canonical explanation of the so-called “delectations of eating” in the fiction of Gogol'. “The forbidden genital gratifications,” he observes, “are compensated for by the delights of the table. To use the psychoanalytic terminology, the individual has reverted tothe ‘oral’ stage of his libidinal development” (p. 237). For another psychoanalytical treatment of the fictionof Gogol', see Rancour-Laferriere's, Daniel Out from under Gogol's Overcoat: A Psychoanalytic Study (AnnArbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1982)Google Scholar. Gogol “s own problematic sexual orientation is the subject of Karlinsky's, The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976 Google Scholar.
35. Simon Karlinsky argues that Khlestakov's obsessive flirtations with the Mayor's wife and daughterare prompted “not by a real desire to seduce a woman or to win her love, but by the need to make conquest she can boast about to his male friends “; see The Sexual Labyrinth, p. 165.
36. Kolb-Seletski, “Gastronomy, Gogol, and His Fiction,” p. 50. In a letter to Danilevskii on 20 December 1832, Gogol’ himself writes of an acquaintance who ran out of a bordello “as if out of a pastry shop ” (10: 253).
37. I have particularly in mind his essay, “A Few Words about Pushkin” (1835), where Gogol’ assertsthat in order to understand the works of the great Russian poet “one must be to a certain extent a sybarite, who has long since had his fill of coarse and heavy foods and who now eats no more than a thimble full ofgame fowl and savors such a dish, one whose taste seems utterly indefinable, strange and totally unpleasantto a person accustomed to swallowing the concoctions of a peasant cook” (8: 54).
38. It is interesting that a similar dynamic—whereby an inspector general is “fed” in order to satisfyhis appetite—occurs in one of the prototypes of the play, Nikolai Polevoi's Revizory (1832). One of the investigators here, Gippius points out, is a gourmet who is put on a fast and not allowed to have anything good to eat. Later he is “enticed with puddings and pastries and promises that he will be given the recipes. “See Gippius, “The Inspector General: Structure and Problems,” p. 243.
39. Kott, “The Eating of The Government Inspector,” p. 22.
40. See Karlinsky, Simon, “Portrait of Gogol as a Word Glutton (With Rabelais, Sterne, and GertrudeStein as Background Figures),” California Slavic Studies 5 (1970): 169–186.Google Scholar
41. Bell, Rudolph M., Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985 Google Scholar.
42. In his correspondence, Gogol’ repeatedly associated food and eating with Satan. “There seems tobe some kind of devil sitting in my belly,” Gogol’ writes to A. S. Danilevskii on 31 December 1838, “adevil who positively ruins everything, at times drawing some tempting picture of a meal that is difficult todigest” (11: 192). See also 11: 197, 200, 225.