Man on Earth (The Slow-Moving Literary Criticism Section of THE KYIV COMMIX)
Encyclopedic Knowledge on the Specific Topic is Set Out in But a Few Brief and Excellent Paragraphs; Proper Conclusions Based Thereon Are Reached Without Superfluous Eloquence
The Several Conclusions Reached Regarding “THE KYIV COMMIX” Based on Bakhtin Are Not Exhaustive; Our Enlightened Readers Remain Free to Further Reflect Upon the Protean Art of “THE COMMIX” as Magnified by Bakhtin’s Critical Lens
THEORY
Taken from “The Bakhtin Reader”, a 1994 publication found as a PDF file on the Internet, from Section 2, Chapter 10 (both section and chapter titled ‘The Heteroglot Novel’), Note on the Two Stylistic Lines of the Novel – roughly excerpted, somewhat reworded, and only a little bastardized. Here it is:
A major phase in the FIRST Line Bakhtin picks out for attention is the development of the Baroque novel in the seventeenth century. The historical significance of this, he claims, is enormous: ‘Almost all categories of the modern novel have their origin in one or another of its aspects’.
Especially important is its idea of testing the hero, of putting him on trial.
This tradition moves through Christian legends, confessional autobiographies and Romantic ‘chosen-ness’.
What makes the novel within the First Stylistic Line distinct as a genre from other genres like rhetoric and poetry, Bakhtin argues, is that the ‘novel is structured in uninterrupted dialogic interaction with the languages that surround it’. There is a profound awareness of the force of language stratification, but heteroglossia is rigorously excluded.
The SECOND Line of stylistic development does not originate in such recognizable novelistic form. It derives from a multitude of semi-literary, usually low genres drawn from everyday life. Instead of smoothing out their differences by ‘literarizing’ them within a single respectable language (like the First Line does), the Second Line purposefully preserves their extra-literariness as a means of diversifying the languages represented.
Indeed, it is from the minor low genres associated with the itinerant stage, market-day fairs, street songs, that the novel acquires its devices for constructing images of a language. These forms, Bakhtin says, are ‘shot through with a profound distrust of human discourse as such’.
He singles out the discourse of three figures central to this popular tradition – the Rogue, the Fool and the Clown – as exerting an enormous influence upon the subsequent shape of the novel.
‘Thus, the Rogue’s gay deception parodies high languages;
‘The Clown’s malicious distortion of them; his turning them inside out;
‘And, finally, the Fool’s naïve incomprehension of them.
‘These three dialogic categories, which had organized heteroglossia in the novel at the dawn of its history, emerge in modern times with extraordinary clarity’.
The Rogue is the hero of the first novel-form of the Second Line: the picaresque adventure novel. This is of tremendous significance, for the rogue introduces the notion of the human being as unfinalizable.
The Rogue is deliberately deceptive, he is inconsistent, alternatively brave and cowardly, criminal and honest. Moreover, the masquerading of the Rogue mocks the solemnity of heroes in other genres and opposes the finalized image of the human being they construct.
Such developments in the picaresque novel prepare the way for ‘the great exemplars of the novel of the Second Line, such as, for example, “DON QUIXOTE”, with its hero as Fool. In these great and seminal works, the novelistic genre becomes what it really is; it unfolds in its fullest potential’.
Part of that potential, developed in the Second Line, is the novel’s ability for autocriticism; especially in the dialogic interaction between the two Lines, the development of novelistic form can be seen as a continuous process of renewal by means of self-parody. The essence of the novel form for Bakhtin is its continually remade novelness.
PRACTICE
So, with respect to the First Stylistic Line of the Novel, we have the straightforward hero from Christian allegory, Saint Stephan, who is tested and tried (quite literally put on trial) in Vols. 1-3 of “The Kyiv Commix”, where his arc goes from fall to redemption, and appears to complete.
Now, with Vol. 4, a somewhat more minor (but far from insignificant) character from the earlier volumes, one Steve Kowalski, appears to move to the fore as the new and still un-tempered hero, who must now be ruthlessly tested and tried.
In the first three volumes, we find the Rogue, the Clown, and the Fool of the Second Line spending a lot of time, each in his own way, pursuing the hero of Christian allegory of the First Line, with the intent to maliciously and viciously twist, attack, and distort his image of fallen but redeemable good; to outright destroy him physically (a goal that had possibly been achieved), as well as spiritually, by trampling down, disparaging, and soiling his memory.
In “The Commix”, and particularly in its first three volumes, Josh Davies, The Ferret, and Welsh Losser correspond fairly well, respectively, to the Rogue, the Clown, and the Fool.
Of course, while Clown appears to fit The Ferret pretty snugly, the other two, at first glance, do not seem so secure in their Bakhtinian dialogical suits here assigned them.
As Rogue, Davies certainly is treacherous: He is deceptive and necessarily inconsistent, as well as both criminal and honest – the honesty as signature MO in facilitating his non-stop criminality. But as for bravery or cowardice, there appears to be little evidence of either. Rather, there is more simply a highly controlled and well-hidden murderous psychopathy shot through with a low-key, but nevertheless irrepressible joy.
Finally, as for being ‘unfinalizable’, having been decapitated, it becomes rather hard to make that claim on the Rogue Josh Davies’s behalf. Although, true, that head alone, currently in the possession of The Hunched Cornish, may end up generating some action yet. In an alternative, Davies himself may simply appear again in life as though nothing had happened.
And if Welsh Losser is a Fool, then he’s an Evil Fool; a cursed and deformed court jester, whose own non-stop lame and corny jokes make him stupid to the world he bears so much ill-will and malice toward; until that one fateful day when Life forces him to finally dispense with the jokes, driving him to a higher, far more dangerous, heartless, pathetic, pitiable, and monstrous form of insanity.
In any case, Losser is a far cry from the Fool of Don Quixote, who, if he is a Fool, is a Holy Fool.
Now, with Vol. 4, these three foundational Commix characters do not appear to have the same availability as they do in the first three volumes (much like Saint Stephan, himself).
This means that Steve Kowalski must be put through his trials by other ill-wishing and ill-meaning forces – forces that are likely far more formidable as nemeses of Evil for Kowalski than the first three had been for Saint Stephan.
Although Saint Stephan and Steve Kowalski are by no means meant to be equated. One does not now become a substitute for the other. In fact, the two are completely different.
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