The psychology of Ivan the fool is revealed by the variety of ways in which he manages to get punished. In one tale, for example, he is supposed to deliver dumplings to his brothers. But on the way he notices his shadow following him and, thinking the shadow is hungry, throws the dumplings at it. As a result, his brothers beat the living daylights out of him. In another tale he takes the creaking sounds made by a birch tree for spoken words, and is later ridiculed by his “smart” brothers. Sometimes his foolish act brings punishment without even the intervention of another person, as when he cuts the tree limb he is perched on. In some of the tales the fool gains no reward for his troubles, and merely moves from one punishing situation to another. In other stories he does attain a worthy goal, such as gold or a beautiful wife. Ivan the fool sometimes turns out to be Ivan the prince.23 In the meantime, whatever the outcome, the fool is always punished in some direct or indirect fashion for his manifestly stupid actions. The descriptions of the punishments are remarkably detailed, they tend to be repetitious, and they are clearly intended to elicit sadistic outbursts of laughter from the listener.
Russians laugh at their folkloric fool. He seems to deliberately provoke punishment (even though, logically speaking, he is not responsible, for he is retarded, i.e., too “stupid” to understand what he is doing). His apparent masochism cannot but gratify the addressee’s sadistic impulses. But the laughter also reveals a kind of recognition. Some previously repressed information about the self is released by the fool.24 In laughing at their folkloric fool, Russians are laughing at themselves. He is, after all, often named Ivan—a favorite name among Russians,25 a name that may even be considered metonymic for Russians.26 When Ol’ga Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia titled her ethnographic monograph “The Life of ‘Ivan,’” she was counting on this metonymy.27 As Maksim Gor’kii argued, Ivan the fool represents the Russian peasant’s own willingness to take a beating, to be passively resigned in the face of whatever sud’ba has to offer.28
The listener’s laughter is thus a doubly masochistic phenomenon. Ivan the fool does things which provoke ridicule upon himself, and laughing Russians are in effect ridiculing themselves. Ivan’s provocative style of masochism finds resonance in the Russians’ habit of laughing at themselves.
The folkloric fool either does not know his acts will get him into trouble because he is too retarded to understand what is going on, or he does know but is slyly biding his time (“sebe na ume,” as the Russians say). Scholars have tended to focus on the latter. The masochism is easier to ignore that way, and emphasis can be put on the tales in which Ivan is covertly clever, and in which there is a happy ending (although sometimes the happy ending is just a matter of luck, with the fool remaining truly naive). It is in any case important to keep in mind that tales about the fool do not always have a happy ending (in such instances the fool is likely to be nameless). In these tales the listener is treated to nothing but a series of masochistic incidents. Even when the ending is happy (e.g., the fool gets the princess and the gold), what comes before the ending is in any case overtly self-destructive for the fool.
The apparent masochism of the Russian folkloric fool sometimes shades over into altruism. As Smirnov observes, Ivan is “ready for any self-sacrifice.”29 Dmitrii Likhachev considers the fool specifically in the context of his discussion of Russian kindness (“dobrota”).30 The fool can be very kind—to animals, to the poor, to his family. For example, he permits a swarm of mosquitoes to suck his blood. Or he gives alms to beggars. In such behavior, as Meletinskii observes, the fool is “the embodiment of the great potentialities inherent in the simple man of the people.”31
In his altruistic function Ivan the fool seems almost holy. Likhachev uses the terms “durak” and “iurodivyi” almost interchangeably.32 The fool is capable of loving his enemies in a curiously Christ-like fashion. He can be, as the Russians say, stupid to the point of saintliness (“glup do sviatosti”).33
The Fool and His Mother
Joanna Hubbs prefers to view the fool’s altruistic behavior as “motherly.”34 A quite explicit example is the foolish general who sits naked on some eggs in order to hatch out the chicks—a hen is a mother, after all.35 In an early Soviet literary variant titled “Van’ka Dobroi” (“Van’ka the Good) the fool lives happily ever after with his mother and two of the animals he has saved.36
The Russian folkloric fool tends to be strongly attached to his family, especially his mother. Altruism in Russia, as everywhere else,37 is learned on mother’s knee. But the foolishness as well as the altruism should be characterized as “motherly,” or at least as having to do with the mother. In many variants the problem is that the fool cannot seem to make a break with his mother. He is often the youngest child, which means he is the last one to have emerged from his mother’s body, and no one else has since occupied his position as mother’s little boy.38 He is very passive and dependent on his mother. His closeness to her is part of what makes him laughable. He is an adult, but is developmentally retarded. Sometimes he is speechless, like an infant. He is a lazybones, a stay-at-home, usually remaining in his mother’s hut and lying on (or behind) the stove. Sometimes even his name suggests the stove to which he is so attached: “Ivan Zapechnik” (“Ivan Behind-the-Stove”) or “Kniaz’ Pechurinskii” (“Prince Stovish”).39 The image of the stove (“pech’,” a feminine noun) is decidedly maternal, and reinforces the idea of the fool’s continuing dependence on his mother (“The stove is our dear mother,” says a peasant proverb).40 Like a little child, the fool is often without britches, he is dirty,41 does not clean himself, has a runny nose, and so forth. His mother is more or less forced to take care of him.42 When he does get up the energy to go out and do some daring, stupid deed, he often follows this with a return home to his mother and a reversion to his former passivity and nearly symbiotic union with his mother. The behavior of the Russian folkloric fool thus exemplifies that grade of masochism in which the individual, when behaving masochistically, is attempting to move away from the mother (see clinical discussion, above, 109). In any case, the boundary of the foolish self with the mother is at issue.
Russian proverbs often implicate the mother (but not the father) in the fool’s foolishness. There are many ways, for example, to excuse a fool by saying he was born that way (e.g., “Ne durak, a rodom tak,” or “Kak rozheny, tak i zamorozheny”).43 These are hints that the mother somehow gave birth badly, or made some kind of mistake in giving birth to the fool. She compensates for this by taking pity, by devoting special attention to her defective child (in the tales he is often the favored third child). But sometimes she will neglect or abuse the child.44 Sometimes she will admit that her child is a fool.45 One proverb has her formerly speechless son call her a fool (“Tri goda ne bail parnishko, da: ‘dura mat””).46