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

dream. They counterfeit true reasoning just sufficiently

to deceive a mind dropping off to sleep. There is still an element

of logic in them, if you will, but it is a logic lacking in tension

and, for that very reason, affording us relief from intellectual

effort. Many “witticisms” are reasonings of this kind, considerably

abridged reasonings, of which we are given only the beginning and

the end. Such play upon ideas evolves in the direction of a play

upon words in proportion as the relations set up between the ideas

become more superficial: gradually we come to take no account of the

meaning of the words we hear, but only of their sound. It might be

instructive to compare with dreams certain comic scenes in which one

of the characters systematically repeats in a nonsensical fashion

what another character whispers in his ear. If you fall asleep with

people talking round you, you sometimes find that what they say

gradually becomes devoid of meaning, that the sounds get distorted,

as it were, and recombine in a haphazard fashion to form in your

mind the strangest of meanings, and that you are reproducing between

yourself and the different speakers the scene between Petit-Jean and

The Prompter. [Footnote: Les Plaideurs (Racine).]

 

There are also COMIC OBSESSIONS that seem to bear a great

resemblance to dream obsessions. Who has not had the experience of

seeing the same image appear in several successive dreams, assuming

a plausible meaning in each of them, whereas these dreams had no

other point in common. Effects of repetition sometimes present this

special form on the stage or in fiction: some of them, in fact,

sound as though they belonged to a dream. It may be the same with

the burden of many a song: it persistently recurs, always unchanged,

at the end of every verse, each time with a different meaning.

 

Not infrequently do we notice in dreams a particular CRESCENDO, a

weird effect that grows more pronounced as we proceed. The first

concession extorted from reason introduces a second; and this one,

another of a more serious nature; and so on till the crowning

absurdity is reached. Now, this progress towards the absurd produces

on the dreamer a very peculiar sensation. Such is probably the

experience of the tippler when he feels himself pleasantly drifting

into a state of blankness in which neither reason nor propriety has

any meaning for him. Now, consider whether some of Moliere’s plays

would not produce the same sensation: for instance, Monsieur de

Pourceaugnac, which, after beginning almost reasonably, develops

into a sequence of all sorts of absurdities. Consider also the

Bourgeois gentilhomme, where the different characters seem to allow

themselves to be caught up in a very whirlwind of madness as the

play proceeds. “If it is possible to find a man more completely mad,

I will go and publish it in Rome.” This sentence, which warns us

that the play is over, rouses us from the increasingly extravagant

dream into which, along with M. Jourdain, we have been sinking.

 

But, above all, there is a special madness that is peculiar to

dreams. There are certain special contradictions so natural to the

imagination of a dreamer, and so absurd to the reason of a man wide-awake, that it would be impossible to give a full and correct idea

of their nature to anyone who had not experienced them. We allude to

the strange fusion that a dream often effects between two persons

who henceforth form only one and yet remain distinct. Generally one

of these is the dreamer himself. He feels he has not ceased to be

what he is; yet he has become someone else. He is himself, and not

himself. He hears himself speak and sees himself act, but he feels

that some other “he” has borrowed his body and stolen his voice. Or

perhaps he is conscious of speaking and acting as usual, but he

speaks of himself as a stranger with whom he has nothing in common;

he has stepped out of his own self. Does it not seem as though we

found this same extraordinary confusion in many a comic scene? I am

not speaking of Amphitryon, in which play the confusion is perhaps

suggested to the mind of the spectator, though the bulk of the comic

effect proceeds rather from what we have already called a

“reciprocal interference of two series.” I am speaking of the

extravagant and comic reasonings in which we really meet with this

confusion in its pure form, though it requires some looking into to

pick it out. For instance, listen to Mark Twain’s replies to the

reporter who called to interview him:

 

QUESTION. Isn’t that a brother of yours? ANSWER. Oh! yes, yes, yes!

Now you remind me of it, that WAS a brother of mine. That’s William-

-BILL we called him. Poor old Bill!

 

Q. Why? Is he dead, then? A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could

tell. There was a great mystery about it.

 

Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then? A. Well, yes, in a

sort of general way. We buried him.

 

Q. BURIED him! BURIED him, without knowing whether he was dead or

not? A. Oh no! Not that. He was dead enough.

 

Q. Well, I confess that I can’t understand this. If you buried him,

and you knew he was dead—A. No! no! We only thought he was.

 

Q. Oh, I see! He came to life again? A. I bet he didn’t.

 

Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. SOMEBODY was dead.

SOMEBODY was buried. Now, where was the mystery? A. Ah! that’s just

it! That’s it exactly. You see, we were twins,—defunct and I,—and

we got mixed in the bath-tub when we were only two weeks old, and

one of us was drowned. But we didn’t know which. Some think it was

Bill. Some think it was me.

 

Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do YOU think? A. Goodness knows! I

would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this awful tragedy has

cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a secret now,

which I have never revealed to any creature before. One of us had a

peculiar mark,—a large mole on the back of his left hand: that was

ME. THAT CHILD WAS THE ONE THAT WAS DROWNED! … etc., etc.

 

A close examination will show us that the absurdity of this dialogue

is by no means an absurdity of an ordinary type. It would disappear

were not the speaker himself one of the twins in the story. It

results entirely from the fact that Mark Twain asserts he is one of

these twins, whilst all the time he talks as though he were a third

person who tells the tale. In many of our dreams we adopt exactly

the same method.

V

Regarded from this latter point of view, the comic seems to show

itself in a form somewhat different from the one we lately

attributed to it. Up to this point, we have regarded laughter as

first and foremost a means of correction. If you take the series of

comic varieties and isolate the predominant types at long intervals,

you will find that all the intervening varieties borrow their comic

quality from their resemblance to these types, and that the types

themselves are so many models of impertinence with regard to

society. To these impertinences society retorts by laughter, an even

greater impertinence. So evidently there is nothing very benevolent

in laughter. It seems rather inclined to return evil for evil.

 

But this is not what we are immediately struck by in our first

impression of the laughable. The comic character is often one with

whom, to begin with, our mind, or rather our body, sympathises. By

this is meant that we put ourselves for a very short time in his

place, adopt his gestures, words, arid actions, and, if amused by

anything laughable in him, invite him, in imagination, to share his

amusement with us; in fact, we treat him first as a playmate. So, in

the laugher we find a “hail-fellow-well-met” spirit—as far, at

least, as appearances go—which it would be wrong of us not to take

into consideration. In particular, there is in laughter a movement

of relaxation which has often been noticed, and the reason of which

we must try to discover. Nowhere is this impression more noticeable

than in the last few examples. In them, indeed, we shall find its

explanation.

 

When the comic character automatically follows up his idea, he

ultimately thinks, speaks and acts as though he were dreaming. Now,

a dream is a relaxation. To remain in touch with things and men, to

see nothing but what is existent and think nothing but what is

consistent, demands a continuous effort of intellectual tension.

This effort is common sense. And to remain sensible is, indeed, to

remain at work. But to detach oneself from things and yet continue

to perceive images, to break away from logic and yet continue to

string together ideas, is to indulge in play or, if you prefer, in

dolce far niente. So, comic absurdity gives us from the outset the

impression of playing with ideas. Our first impulse is to join in

the game. That relieves us from the strain of thinking. Now, the

same might be said of the other forms of the laughable. Deep-rooted

in the comic, there is always a tendency, we said, to take the line

of least resistance, generally that of habit. The comic character no

longer tries to be ceaselessly adapting and readapting himself to

the society of which he is a member. He slackens in the attention

that is due to life. He more or less resembles the absentminded.

Maybe his will is here even more concerned than his intellect, and

there is not so much a want of attention as a lack of tension;

still, in some way or another, he is absent, away from his work,

taking it easy. He abandons social convention, as indeed—in the

case we have just been considering—he abandoned logic. Here, too,

our first impulse is to accept the invitation to take it easy. For a

short time, at all events, we join in the game. And that relieves us

from the strain of living.

 

But we rest only for a short time. The sympathy that is capable of

entering into the impression of the comic is a very fleeting one. It

also comes from a lapse in attention. Thus, a stern father may at

times forget himself and join in some prank his child is playing,

only to check himself at once in order to correct it.

 

Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate,

it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is

directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties

taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of

sympathy or kindness.

 

Shall we be told that the motive, at all events; may be a good one,

that we often punish because we love, and that laughter, by checking

the outer manifestations of certain failings, thus causes the person

laughed at to correct these failings and thereby improve himself

inwardly?

 

Much might be said on this point. As a general rule, and speaking

roughly, laughter doubtless exercises a useful function. Indeed, the

whole of our analysis points to this fact. But it does not therefore

follow that laughter always hits the mark or is invariably inspired

by sentiments of kindness or even of justice.

 

To be certain of always hitting the mark, it would have to proceed

from an act of reflection. Now, laughter is simply the result of a

mechanism set up in us by nature or, what