3rd Emotion - "3E" / "Crackers"

“Cracker” (3rd Emotion) 

It’s easy to describe “cracker” - the name itself suggests the colors for the palette. However, in this case it would be completely wrong to use exclusively cold, monochromatic colors. Like any Third, the 3rd Emotion feels constrained but powerful potential within itself, and in cases where the timidity of emotional self-disclosure can be overcome, fire and passion burst out from under the iceberg of “cracker”.

However, such self-disclosures do not mean a complete abolition of duality of feelings. This is how the philosopher N. Berdyaev describes the state of his 3rd Emotion: “I noticed the slightest shades in changes in mood. And at the same time, this hypersensitivity was combined in me with the fundamental dryness of my nature. My sensitivity is dry. Many have noticed this spiritual dryness of mine. I "I do not belong to the so-called "spiritual" people. The lyrical element in me is weakly expressed, suppressed... In the emotional life of the soul there was disharmony, often weakness... The very dryness of the soul was a disease."

The 3rd Emotion is the most defenseless creature in the world. The 3rd Physics is at least protected from blows by the law, the 3rd Logic and the 3rd Will are protected from blows with sin in half by ethics, but there is neither ethics nor law capable of even hypothetically taking up the defense of the “cracker” from the most painful for him blows: hysterics and emotional executions in general.

The defenselessness of the 3rd Emotion in the face of a violent eruption of feelings is perceived by us as nothing more than an incident, an eccentricity, but not a personal drama. But in vain. There is a real tragedy here, doubly painful because it is absolutely incomprehensible and invisible to others.

Even such a great expert on the human soul as Leo Tolstoy has to reproach the indifference to the pains of the 3rd Emotion. Recreating the image of the unfortunate Karenin in his famous novel, he is amazingly accurate in looking after the 3rd Emotion, but is still very far from understanding its nature and sympathy. Here is a typical passage: “No one, except the people closest to Alexey Alexandrovich, knew that this seemingly cold and reasonable person had one weakness, contrary to his general character. Alexey Alexandrovich could not indifferently hear or see the tears of a child or woman. The sight of tears brought him into a confused state, and he completely lost his ability to reason."

It is impossible not to give credit, Tolstoy’s pen may be cold, but accurate in describing the vulnerability of the 3rd Emotion. I am ready to supplement it only with personal observation, which could well become information for a criminal chronicle or, at worst, a source of public censure, if we were not talking about emotional pressure. So, one of my friends, having felt her 3rd Emotion, was completely robbed by her own husband. Having observed her vulnerability to emotional pressure, he squeezed money out of her with tears until he had squeezed everything out. In response to the hysterical screams, she only had time to cover her ears and mutter: “Take, take everything, but, for God’s sake, shut up...”

The phrase: “Only without emotions!” - with which the “cracker” usually comes into conflict, even pronounced in a categorical tone, is in fact not a demand, but a secret plea for leniency towards weakness, a vain attempt to cover up a sore spot in a fight.

* * *

Describing Karenin, Tolstoy is impeccably accurate in that when circumstances pick out the “cracker” from his icy shell, he, having let go of the constantly tense reins of feelings, suddenly begins to experience an unknown, even a little frightening satisfaction from the manifestation of his experiences. According to Tolstoy, Karenin, bending over the bed of his wife preparing for death: "...suddenly felt that what he considered a mental disorder was, on the contrary, a blissful state of soul, which suddenly gave him a new, never experienced happiness... “He stood on his knees and, resting his head on the crook of her hand, which was burning him with fire through his jacket, sobbed like a child.”

However, as is clear, and rightly so, from Tolstoy’s novel, episodes of openness of feelings are rare for the 3rd Emotion and have no continuation. Therefore, as a result, the “cracker”, in addition to being defenseless against emotional beatings, is often doomed to another torment - loneliness.

Previously, speaking about ideas that tightly linked love and emotionality, it was already stated that the measure of love in humanity is experienced and observed feelings, and therefore the “romantic” (1st Emotion) is the best lover in the world. For the "cracker" it's the other way around - he's the worst lover in the world.

Outsiders usually generally deny him the ability to love, as contemporaries partly did in relation to Chekhov, arguing that there was no great love in Chekhov’s life. But, according to a more accurate observation by Kuprin, the problem for Chekhov was not the content of feelings, but the form of expression. Kuprin wrote: “There lived in him a fear of pathos, strong feelings and several theatrical effects inseparable from it. I can only compare his situation with one: someone loves a woman with all the ardor, tenderness and depth of which a person of subtle feelings, enormous intelligence and talent. But he will never dare to say about it in pompous, pompous words and cannot even imagine. How he will kneel down and press one hand to his heart and how he will speak in the trembling voice of his first lover. And therefore he loves and is silent and suffers silently, and will never dare to express what is untied and loud, according to all the rules of declamation, an average-looking fop explains." That’s right, Kuprin is absolutely right, but instinct is instinct, and a person incapable of a broad sensitive gesture is more often than anyone else doomed to loneliness.

“Impenetrability” is a word that most accurately conveys claims against the 3rd Emotion on the part of people who are close to it. During a casual acquaintance, attention is rarely paid to this trait; “crackers” in this situation are extremely comfortable, reliable, interesting people, in whose company no serious discomfort is felt. Otherwise, things will develop with serious rapprochement, not to mention living together. The impenetrability of the 3rd Emotion reveals itself as a painful and even frightening trait. Imagine living with someone without a clear idea of how they feel about you. With a “cracker” you can marry, have sex, raise children, build a house, and at the same time never know how he feels about you. A blank wall of emotional inexpressiveness rises in front of everyone for whom it is important to clarify their attitude towards themselves. At best, such an experimenter feels indifference to himself, at worst - hidden hostility, which in reality, most likely, does not exist. Not to say, affection, even obviously expressed irritation, anger can be more attractive than the grave peace with which the 3rd Emotion protects its vulnerable soul. Only when you find yourself next to a “cracker” do you understand how important an instrument in behavior and relationships is emotion and how it can be lacking for the most basic coexistence, how painfully the chronic impenetrability of the “cracker” is experienced.

In addition to the fact that the “cracker” rarely marries, he also reproduces poorly. The source of the problem was mentioned earlier - vulnerability to emotional pressure. Children have only one means of influencing the world - screaming, and screaming, we already know, is the most painful means of influencing the 3rd Emotion. Hence, the “cracker” has a fear of childbirth and, as a consequence, infertility.

One can only wonder how the 3rd Emotion survives in such conditions, but the fact remains that “crackers”, albeit in small numbers, violating the principles of natural selection, continue to live among us, confirming the old idea that nature abhors a vacuum.

The "cracker" himself is an ideal child. It’s as if he was specially created for bad parents. The lack of freedom of expression of moods and pains given to him by nature itself frees parents from the need to be sensitive and attentive towards the child. When Bunin asked Chekhov’s mother and sister if he had ever cried, both firmly answered: “Never in my life.” Isn't it a perfect child? However, this feature of the “cracker” has its downside. The absence of dark-colored emotions in a child with the 3rd Emotion is balanced by the absence of light-colored emotions. And when Prishvin said that he was born without a smile, he thereby stated not only the fact of his own misfortune, but also the misfortune of his parents.

The impossibility of a wide, open smile, free, loud laughter is perhaps the biggest problem of the 3rd Emotion. One girl wrote to a psychiatrist: “I’m trying with all my might to create something like a smiley face, a grimace furiously widens my eyes... From the outside it looks like a convulsive stretching of the corners of my mouth... Teach me to smile!” Indeed, a stone smile, laughter, either silent, like in Chekhov and Molotov, or taking the form of a giggle, like in Zoshchenko and Robespierre - that’s all that the 3rd Emotion usually manages to squeeze out of itself.

The suppressed laughter of the “cracker” is especially noticeable against the background of the free cackle of the “romantic”. Kataev, remembering Zoshchenko, said: “In a world of blissful idleness, we became close to the staff captain (Zoshchenko - A.A.), who turned out to be not at all as withdrawn as various memoirists later portrayed him, emphasizing that he, a great humorist, himself never did not smile and was dry and gloomy.

None of this is true.

The god that united our souls was humor, which did not leave us for a minute. I, as usual, laughed loudly - as the key once remarked (Olesha - A.A.), “laughed” - while the laughter of the staff captain could rather be called a restrained poisonous laugh, I would even say ironic hehehe..."

Despite the fact that from the outside the 3rd Emotion looks like a creature that laughs rarely and stifled, it has an innate humorous gift. More precisely, what we take to be the gift of humor is a combination of the two main components of the 3rd Emotion: processionalism and the fig leaf. That is, the need for constant emotional self-expression is not realized directly and openly, but under the cover of irony - the usual fig leaf for the 3rd Emotion. From these two components, the image of a “cracker” is formed, as a poisonous, cynical person, peering intently at the funny side of life, with an imperturbable air telling jokes that make the audience choke with laughter. This is how Bester Keaton and Mikhail Zoshchenko are described and their images, adjusted for scale, can be transferred to the image of the “cracker” as a whole.

The imprint of constriction usually lies on the fruits of the humorous creativity of the 3rd Emotion, although by outside observers it is perceived not as a defect, but as some kind of original form. For example, the famous English joke, specially designed not for a cackle, but for a thin, barely noticeable smile, is the fruit of the creativity of an Englishman who is not so much prone to originality as suffering from his emotional dryness.

* * *

In its external manifestations, “cracker” is the complete opposite of “romantic”. There is nothing to contrast with the loudness of the 1st Emotion of the 3rd Emotion, except for a smooth, poor modulation, close to muttering speech structure (as Chekhov spoke, according to Bunin’s description). If the “cracker” dares to sing, then in this case too the monotony, narrowness of the band, and mechanical sound will make themselves felt. The gestures of the 3rd Emotion and facial expressions are also poor. I don’t know why, but usually the timbre of a “cracker’s” voice is shifted upward, towards falsetto.

The same contrast is in the details. If the handwriting of the 1st Emotion is sweeping, airy, curly, then the handwriting of the 3rd Emotion is neat, collected, small, simple. If the punctuation of the 1st Emotion is filled with bright, passionate signs, then the punctuation of the 3rd Emotion is even, impassive, and poor. As criticism correctly noted: in one poem by Tsvetaeva (1st Emotion) there are more exclamation marks than in the entire work of Joseph Brodsky (3rd Emotion).

The opposite of the 1st Emotion is the 3rd Emotion’s understanding of the tasks of metaphor. Let us remember that Max Voloshin, being a “romantic,” categorically argued that beer can be compared with the sea, but the sea cannot be compared with beer. However, many major poets, for example, Joseph Brodsky, who loved to compare the ocean with a blanket, would obviously disagree with him. So who is right? Both are right, but each in their own way. The essence of the differences between the “romantic” and the “cracker” regarding metaphor is that, in the view of the “romantic,” metaphor should work only in one direction - to increase the small (beer - sea), while the metaphorical prism of the “cracker” usually works in the opposite direction - to reduce the big one (sea - beer). In this regard, I will quote the famous description of a thunderstorm in Chekhov’s “The Steppe”: “To the left, as if someone had struck a match across the sky, a pale phosphorescent strip flashed and went out. It was heard that somewhere very far away someone was walking on an iron roof. Probably We walked barefoot on the roof because the iron grumbled dully." It is unlikely that you will find a more down-to-earth description of such a powerful and frightening phenomenon as a thunderstorm, seen as if through inverted binoculars. Only the 3rd Emotion can recreate it this way.

I remember, discussing the manifestation of procession in the artistic creativity of the 2nd Emotion, I called this creativity “akynical”. So, the 3rd Emotion is also processional, even superprocessual, therefore “cracker” is “superakyn”. I think Joseph Brodsky should be recognized as an amazing example of such a superakyn. The endless flow of his poems, like a waterfall, where the ends of the lines and stanzas are not ends in the proper sense of the word, but steps through which an inexhaustible current of words rolls, recording almost every minute the slightest shades of the poet’s moods - this is Brodsky’s style, exemplarily reflecting the originality of the artistic appearance of the works of the 3rd Emotion.

Another paradoxical, in the opinion of literary studies, feature that unites poets with the 3rd Emotion is that, being the finest lyricists, they find themselves on the sidelines of the main lyrical theme - love. Before Brodsky appeared, this circumstance was noted as an incident in the work of Zabolotsky and Tvardovsky. However, if literary criticism had taken a closer look, it would have discovered in their works not only the absence of a clearly expressed love theme, but also signs of feverish passion as such, regardless of the content.

The programmatic slogan for the 3rd Emotion in general, not only busy literature, can be considered the classic phrase of Turgenev’s Bazarov: “Friend Arkady, don’t speak beautifully.”

If we turn to the genre preferences of the “cracker”, then in any kind of artistic activity he is, first of all, a landscape painter and an animal painter. I will say more, the brightest sign of the 3rd Emotion in general, regardless of the nature of the activity, is the only openly demonstrated passion - love for nature and animals. Berdyaev explained the source of this passion as follows: “It was easy for me to express my emotional life only in relation to animals; I poured out all the reserve of my tenderness on them. My exceptional love for animals may be connected with this. This love of a person who has the need for love, but can hardly express it in relation to people. This is the flip side of loneliness."

Here, as in many other cases, a reservation should be made: the vulnerability of the 3rd Emotion is such that the “cracker” tries to cover up and disguise his holy passion for animals, for nature, masquerading as either a hunter or a fisherman (Prishvin, Paustovsky). It seems to “Sukhar” that the breadwinner’s mask reliably hides his “weakness.” But that's not true. The usual indifference to the results of hunting or fishing for the 3rd Emotion betrays it completely. One day, standing with a spinning rod by the river, President Bush complained that he usually goes without a catch. “Then what are you doing here?” - they asked him. “I love casting and I love fishing,” Bush replied. This is the kind of vague answer that the 3rd Emotion has to give when it comes to the origins of her strange, unprofitable hobby.

Although in the section devoted to the 3rd Emotion, quite a lot was said about her artistic preferences, the “cracker” rarely chooses the artistic (religious, mystical, entertainment) field and, moreover, often diligently avoids it, showering representatives of artistic professions with the cold of irony and poorly concealed disdain. If we talk about a career that nature itself seems destined for a “cracker,” then it will be the career of a diplomat.

I don’t know how, but the idea has developed that a great diplomat is the kind of person that if you kick him in the ass at a diplomatic reception, the interlocutor will not read anything on his stony face. God knows where this idea came from, and how often a diplomat gets his ass kicked, but it is obvious that the “cracker” is suitable for this role like no one else. The power of public opinion, even empty, even wild, is limitless, therefore the innate equanimity of the 3rd Emotion really often leads it to the diplomatic field and practically guarantees, regardless of other qualities, a high professional assessment (Molotov).

From the career of a diplomat there is a direct road to the career of a politician. But in the event of such a change of fields, the 3rd Emotion, which previously worked as a plus, begins to work as a minus. Especially lately. The problem is that the current democratization of political life and the rapid growth of the influence of the media on it, which have made the ordinary voter the master of political destiny, have placed an almost insurmountable barrier on the path of the “cracker” politician - a test of emotionality. The apparent insensitivity, the imaginary inability to empathize, the boring speeches of the 3rd Emotion force the voter to look at it with suspicion and hostility. Therefore, even when the 3rd Emotion manages to break through to the helm of power (Thatcher, Bush), its representatives are respected, feared, appreciated, but not loved.