Laughter - Henri Bergson (books to read for self improvement txt) 📗
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in the soul, and that it is only through ideality that we can resume
contact with reality.
Dramatic art forms no exception to this law. What drama goes forth
to discover and brings to light, is a deep-seated reality that is
veiled from us, often in our own interests, by the necessities of
life. What is this reality? What are these necessities? Poetry
always expresses inward states. But amongst these states some arise
mainly from contact with our fellow-men. They are the most intense
as well as the most violent. As contrary electricities attract each
other and accumulate between the two plates of the condenser from
which the spark will presently flash, so, by simply bringing people
together, strong attractions and repulsions take place, followed by
an utter loss of balance, in a word, by that electrification of the
soul known as passion. Were man to give way to the impulse of his
natural feelings, were there neither social nor moral law, these
outbursts of violent feeling would be the ordinary rule in life. But
utility demands that these outbursts should be foreseen and averted.
Man must live in society, and consequently submit to rules. And what
interest advises, reason commands: duty calls, and we have to obey
the summons. Under this dual influence has perforce been formed an
outward layer of feelings and ideas which make for permanence, aim
at becoming common to all men, and cover, when they are not strong
enough to extinguish it, the inner fire of individual passions. The
slow progress of mankind in the direction of an increasingly
peaceful social life has gradually consolidated this layer, just as
the life of our planet itself has been one long effort to cover over
with a cool and solid crust the fiery mass of seething metals. But
volcanic eruptions occur. And if the earth were a living being, as
mythology has feigned, most likely when in repose it would take
delight in dreaming of these sudden explosions, whereby it suddenly
resumes possession of its innermost nature. Such is just the kind of
pleasure that is provided for us by drama. Beneath the quiet humdrum
life that reason and society have fashioned for us, it stirs
something within us which luckily does not explode, but which it
makes us feel in its inner tension. It offers nature her revenge
upon society. Sometimes it makes straight for the goal, summoning up
to the surface, from the depths below, passions that produce a
general upheaval. Sometimes it effects a flank movement, as is often
the case in contemporary drama; with a skill that is frequently
sophistical, it shows up the inconsistencies of society; it
exaggerates the shams and shibboleths of the social law; and so
indirectly, by merely dissolving or corroding the outer crust, it
again brings us back to the inner core. But, in both cases, whether
it weakens society or strengthens nature, it has the same end in
view: that of laying bare a secret portion of ourselves,—what might
be called the tragic element in our character.
This is indeed the impression we get after seeing a stirring drama.
What has just interested us is not so much what we have been told
about others as the glimpse we have caught of ourselves—a whole
host of ghostly feelings, emotions and events that would fain have
come into real existence, but, fortunately for us, did not. It also
seems as if an appeal had been made within us to certain ancestral
memories belonging to a far-away past—memories so deep-seated and
so foreign to our present life that this latter, for a moment, seems
something unreal and conventional, for which we shall have to serve
a fresh apprenticeship. So it is indeed a deeper reality that drama
draws up from beneath our superficial and utilitarian attainments,
and this art has the same end in view as all the others.
Hence it follows that art always aims at what is INDIVIDUAL. What
the artist fixes on his canvas is something he has seen at a certain
spot, on a certain day, at a certain hour, with a colouring that
will never be seen again. What the poet sings of is a certain mood
which was his, and his alone, and which will never return. What the
dramatist unfolds before us is the life-history of a soul, a living
tissue of feelings and events—something, in short, which has once
happened and can never be repeated. We may, indeed, give general
names to these feelings, but they cannot be the same thing in
another soul. They are INDIVIDUALISED. Thereby, and thereby only, do
they belong to art; for generalities, symbols or even types, form
the current coin of our daily perception. How, then, does a
misunderstanding on this point arise?
The reason lies in the fact that two very different things have been
mistaken for each other: the generality of things and that of the
opinions we come to regarding them. Because a feeling is generally
recognised as true, it does not follow that it is a general feeling.
Nothing could be more unique than the character of Hamlet. Though he
may resemble other men in some respects, it is clearly not on that
account that he interests us most. But he is universally accepted
and regarded as a living character. In this sense only is he
universally true. The same holds good of all the other products of
art. Each of them is unique, and yet, if it bear the stamp of
genius, it will come to be accepted by everybody. Why will it be
accepted? And if it is unique of its kind, by what sign do we know
it to be genuine? Evidently, by the very effort it forces us to make
against our predispositions in order to see sincerely. Sincerity is
contagious. What the artist has seen we shall probably never see
again, or at least never see in exactly the same way; but if he has
actually seen it, the attempt he has made to lift the veil compels
our imitation. His work is an example which we take as a lesson. And
the efficacy of the lesson is the exact standard of the genuineness
of the work. Consequently, truth bears within itself a power of
conviction, nay, of conversion, which is the sign that enables us to
recognise it. The greater the work and the more profound the dimly
apprehended truth, the longer may the effect be in coming, but, on
the other hand, the more universal will that effect tend to become.
So the universality here lies in the effect produced, and not in the
cause.
Altogether different is the object of comedy. Here it is in the work
itself that the generality lies. Comedy depicts characters we have
already come across and shall meet with again. It takes note of
similarities. It aims at placing types before our eyes. It even
creates new types, if necessary. In this respect it forms a contrast
to all the other arts.
The very titles of certain classical comedies are significant in
themselves. Le Misanthrope, l’Avare, le Joueur, le Distrait, etc.,
are names of whole classes of people; and even when a character
comedy has a proper noun as its title, this proper noun is speedily
swept away, by the very weight of its contents, into the stream of
common nouns. We say “a Tartuffe,” but we should never say “a
Phedre” or “a Polyeucte.”
Above all, a tragic poet will never think of grouping around the
chief character in his play secondary characters to serve as
simplified copies, so to speak, of the former. The hero of a tragedy
represents an individuality unique of its kind. It may be possible
to imitate him, but then we shall be passing, whether consciously or
not, from the tragic to the comic. No one is like him, because he is
like no one. But a remarkable instinct, on the contrary, impels the
comic poet, once he has elaborated his central character, to cause
other characters, displaying the same general traits, to revolve as
satellites round him. Many comedies have either a plural noun or
some collective term as their title. “Les Femmes savantes,” “Les
Precieuses ridicules,” “Le Monde ou l’on s’ennuie,” etc., represent
so many rallying points on the stage adopted by different groups of
characters, all belonging to one identical type. It would be
interesting to analyse this tendency in comedy. Maybe dramatists
have caught a glimpse of a fact recently brought forward by mental
pathology, viz. that cranks of the same kind are drawn, by a secret
attraction, to seek each other’s company. Without precisely coming
within the province of medicine, the comic individual, as we have
shown, is in some way absentminded, and the transition from absentmindedness to crankiness is continuous. But there is also another
reason. If the comic poet’s object is to offer us types, that is to
say, characters capable of self-repetition, how can he set about it
better than by showing us, in each instance, several different
copies of the same model? That is just what the naturalist does in
order to define a species. He enumerates and describes its main
varieties.
This essential difference between tragedy and comedy, the former
being concerned with individuals and the latter with classes, is
revealed in yet another way. It appears in the first draft of the
work. From the outset it is manifested by two radically different
methods of observation.
Though the assertion may seem paradoxical, a study of other men is
probably not necessary to the tragic poet. We find some of the great
poets have lived a retiring, homely sort of life, without having a
chance of witnessing around them an outburst of the passions they
have so faithfully depicted. But, supposing even they had witnessed
such a spectacle, it is doubtful whether they would have found it of
much use. For what interests us in the work of the poet is the
glimpse we get of certain profound moods or inner struggles. Now,
this glimpse cannot be obtained from without. Our souls are
impenetrable to one another. Certain signs of passion are all that
we ever apperceive externally. These we interpret—though always, by
the way, defectively—only by analogy with what we have ourselves
experienced. So what we experience is the main point, and we cannot
become thoroughly acquainted with anything but our own heart—
supposing we ever get so far. Does this mean that the poet has
experienced what he depicts, that he has gone through the various
situations he makes his characters traverse, and lived the whole of
their inner life? Here, too, the biographies of poets would
contradict such a supposition. How, indeed, could the same man have
been Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and many others? But then
a distinction should perhaps here be made between the personality WE
HAVE and all those we might have had. Our character is the result of
a choice that is continually being renewed. There are points—at all
events there seem to be—all along the way, where we may branch off,
and we perceive many possible directions though we are unable to
take more than one. To retrace one’s steps, and follow to the end
the faintly distinguishable directions, appears to be the essential
element in poetic imagination. Of course, Shakespeare was neither
Macbeth, nor Hamlet, nor Othello; still, he MIGHT HAVE BEEN these
several characters if the circumstances of the case on the one hand,
and the consent of his will on the other, had caused to break out
into explosive action what was nothing more than an inner prompting.
We are strangely mistaken as to the part played by poetic
imagination, if we think it pieces together its heroes out of
fragments filched from right and left, as though it were patching
together a harlequin’s motley. Nothing living would result
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