Laughter - Henri Bergson (books to read for self improvement txt) 📗

that all is over as soon as we begin to notice them.

 

Who are the actors in these scenes? With whom has the wit to deal?

First of all, with his interlocutors themselves, when his witticism

is a direct retort to one of them. Often with an absent person whom

he supposes to have spoken and to whom he is replying. Still

oftener, with the whole world,—in the ordinary meaning of the

term,—which he takes to task, twisting a current idea into a

paradox, or making use of a hackneyed phrase, or parodying some

quotation or proverb. If we compare these scenes in miniature with

one another, we find they are almost always variations of a comic

theme with which we are well acquainted, that of the “robber

robbed.” You take up a metaphor, a phrase, an argument, and turn it

against the man who is, or might be, its author, so that he is made

to say what he did not mean to say and lets himself be caught, to

some extent, in the toils of language. But the theme of the “robber

robbed” is not the only possible one. We have gone over many

varieties of the comic, and there is not one of them that is

incapable of being volatilised into a witticism.

 

Every witty remark, then, lends itself to an analysis, whose

chemical formula, so to say, we are now in a position to state. It

runs as follows: Take the remark, first enlarge it into a regular

scene, then find out the category of the comic to which the scene

evidently belongs: by this means you reduce the witty remark to its

simplest elements and obtain a full explanation of it.

 

Let us apply this method to a classic example. “Your chest hurts me”

(J’AI MAL A VOTRE POITRINE) wrote Mme. de Sevigne to her ailing

daughter—clearly a witty saying. If our theory is correct, we need

only lay stress upon the saying, enlarge and magnify it, and we

shall see it expand into a comic scene. Now, we find this very

scene, ready made, in the AMOUR MEDECIN of Moliere. The sham doctor,

Clitandre, who has been summoned to attend Sganarelle’s daughter,

contents himself with feeling Sganarelle’s own pulse, whereupon,

relying on the sympathy there must be between father and daughter,

he unhesitatingly concludes: “Your daughter is very ill!” Here we

have the transition from the witty to the comical. To complete our

analysis, then, all we have to do is to discover what there is

comical in the idea of giving a diagnosis of the child after

sounding the father or the mother. Well, we know that one essential

form of comic fancy lies in picturing to ourselves a living person

as a kind of jointed dancing-doll, and that frequently, with the

object of inducing us to form this mental picture, we are shown two

or more persons speaking and acting as though attached to one

another by invisible strings. Is not this the idea here suggested

when we are led to materialise, so to speak, the sympathy we

postulate as existing between father and daughter?

 

We now see how it is that writers on wit have perforce confined

themselves to commenting on the extraordinary complexity of the

things denoted by the term without ever succeeding in defining it.

There are many ways of being witty, almost as many as there are of

being the reverse. How can we detect what they have in common with

one another, unless we first determine the general relationship

between the witty and the comic? Once, however, this relationship is

cleared up, everything is plain sailing. We then find the same

connection between the comic and the witty as exists between a

regular scene and the fugitive suggestion of a possible one. Hence,

however numerous the forms assumed by the comic, wit will possess an

equal number of corresponding varieties. So that the comic, in all

its forms, is what should be defined first, by discovering (a task

which is already quite difficult enough) the clue that leads from

one form to the other. By that very operation wit will have been

analysed, and will then appear as nothing more than the comic in a

highly volatile state. To follow the opposite plan, however, and

attempt directly to evolve a formula for wit, would be courting

certain failure. What should we think of a chemist who, having ever

so many jars of a certain substance in his laboratory, would prefer

getting that substance from the atmosphere, in which merely

infinitesimal traces of its vapour are to be found?

 

But this comparison between the witty and the comic is also

indicative of the line we must take in studying the comic in words.

On the one hand, indeed, we find there is no essential difference

between a word that is comic and one that is witty; on the other

hand, the latter, although connected with a figure of speech,

invariably calls up the image, dim or distinct, of a comic scene.

This amounts to saying that the comic in speech should correspond,

point by point, with the comic in actions and in situations, and is

nothing more, if one may so express oneself, than their projection

on to the plane of words. So let us return to the comic in actions

and in situations, consider the chief methods by which it is

obtained, and apply them to the choice of words and the building up

of sentences. We shall thus have every possible form of the comic in

words as well as every variety of wit.

 

1. Inadvertently to say or do what we have no intention of saying or

doing, as a result of inelasticity or momentum, is, as we are aware,

one of the main sources of the comic. Thus, absentmindedness is

essentially laughable, and so we laugh at anything rigid, ready-made, mechanical in gesture, attitude and even facial expression. Do

we find this kind of rigidity in language also? No doubt we do,

since language contains ready-made formulas and stereotyped phrases.

The man who always expressed himself in such terms would invariably

be comic. But if an isolated phrase is to be comic in itself, when

once separated from the person who utters it, it must be something

more than ready-made, it must bear within itself some sign which

tells us, beyond the possibility of doubt, that it was uttered

automatically. This can only happen when the phrase embodies some

evident absurdity, either a palpable error or a contradiction in

terms. Hence the following general rule: A COMIC MEANING IS

INVARIABLY OBTAINED WHEN AN ABSURD IDEA IS FITTED INTO A WELL-ESTABLISHED PHRASE-FORM.

 

“Ce sabre est le plus beau jour de ma vie,” said M. Prudhomme.

Translate the phrase into English or German and it becomes purely

absurd, though it is comic enough in French. The reason is that “le

plus beau jour de ma vie” is one of those ready-made phrase-endings

to which a Frenchman’s ear is accustomed. To make it comic, then, we

need only clearly indicate the automatism of the person who utters

it. This is what we get when we introduce an absurdity into the

phrase. Here the absurdity is by no means the source of the comic,

it is only a very simple and effective means of making it obvious.

 

We have quoted only one saying of M. Prudhomme, but the majority of

those attributed to him belong to the same class. M. Prudhomme is a

man of ready-made phrases. And as there are ready-made phrases in

all languages, M. Prudhomme is always capable of being transposed,

though seldom of being translated. At times the commonplace phrase,

under cover of which the absurdity slips in, is not so readily

noticeable. “I don’t like working between meals,” said a lazy lout.

There would be nothing amusing in the saying did there not exist

that salutary precept in the realm of hygiene: “One should not eat

between meals.”

 

Sometimes, too, the effect is a complicated one. Instead of one

commonplace phrase-form, there are two or three which are dovetailed

into each other. Take, for instance, the remark of one of the

characters in a play by Labiche, “Only God has the right to kill His

fellow-creature.” It would seem that advantage is here taken of two

separate familiar sayings; “It is God who disposes of the lives of

men,” and, “It is criminal for a man to kill his fellow-creature.”

But the two sayings are combined so as to deceive the ear and leave

the impression of being one of those hackneyed sentences that are

accepted as a matter of course. Hence our attention nods, until we

are suddenly aroused by the absurdity of the meaning. These examples

suffice to show how one of the most important types of the comic can

be projected—in a simplified form—on the plane of speech. We will

now proceed to a form which is not so general.

 

2. “We laugh if our attention is diverted to the physical in a

person when it is the moral that is in question,” is a law we laid

down in the first part of this work. Let us apply it to language.

Most words might be said to have a PHYSICAL and a MORAL meaning,

according as they are interpreted literally or figuratively. Every

word, indeed, begins by denoting a concrete object or a material

action; but by degrees the meaning of the word is refined into an

abstract relation or a pure idea. If, then, the above law holds good

here, it should be stated as follows: “A comic effect is obtained

whenever we pretend to take literally an expression which was used

figuratively”; or, “Once our attention is fixed on the material

aspect of a metaphor, the idea expressed becomes comic.”

 

In the phrase, “Tous les arts sont freres” (all the arts are

brothers), the word “frere” (brother) is used metaphorically to

indicate a more or less striking resemblance. The word is so often

used in this way, that when we hear it we do not think of the

concrete, the material connection implied in every relationship. We

should notice it more if we were told that “Tous les arts sont

cousins,” for the word “cousin” is not so often employed in a

figurative sense; that is why the word here already assumes a slight

tinge of the comic. But let us go further still, and suppose that

our attention is attracted to the material side of the metaphor by

the choice of a relationship which is incompatible with the gender

of the two words composing the metaphorical expression: we get a

laughable result. Such is the well-known saying, also attributed to

M. Prudhomme, “Tous les arts (masculine) sont soeurs (feminine).”

“He is always running after a joke,” was said in Boufflers’ presence

regarding a very conceited fellow. Had Boufflers replied, “He won’t

catch it,” that would have been the beginning of a witty saying,

though nothing more than the beginning, for the word “catch” is

interpreted figuratively almost as often as the word “run”; nor does

it compel us more strongly than the latter to materialise the image

of two runners, the one at the heels of the other. In order that the

rejoinder may appear to be a thoroughly witty one, we must borrow

from the language of sport an expression so vivid and concrete that

we cannot refrain from witnessing the race in good earnest. This is

what Boufflers does when he retorts, “I’ll back the joke!”

 

We said that wit often consists in extending the idea of one’s

interlocutor to the point of making him express the opposite of what

he thinks and getting him, so to say, entrapt by his own words. We

must now add that this trap is almost always some metaphor or

comparison the concrete aspect of