Laughter - Henri Bergson (books to read for self improvement txt) 📗
- Author: Henri Bergson
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slowly, as though scanning his words syllable by syllable, whilst
the other stutters. We find the same contrast between the two
lawyers in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. In the rhythm of speech is
generally to be found the physical peculiarity that is destined to
complete the element of professional ridicule. When the author has
failed to suggest a defect of this kind, it is seldom the case that
the actor does not instinctively invent one.
Consequently, there is a natural relationship, which we equally
naturally recognise, between the two images we have been comparing
with each other, the mind crystallising in certain grooves, and the
body losing its elasticity through the influence of certain defects.
Whether or not our attention be diverted from the matter to the
manner, or from the moral to the physical, in both cases the same
sort of impression is conveyed to our imagination; in both, then,
the comic is of the same kind. Here, once more, it has been our aim
to follow the natural trend of the movement of the imagination. This
trend or direction, it may be remembered, was the second of those
offered to us, starting from a central image. A third and final path
remains unexplored, along which we will now proceed.
3. Let us then return, for the last time, to our central image:
something mechanical encrusted on something living. Here, the living
being under discussion was a human being, a person. A mechanical
arrangement, on the other hand, is a thing. What, therefore, incited
laughter was the momentary transformation of a person into a thing,
if one considers the image from this standpoint. Let us then pass
from the exact idea of a machine to the vaguer one of a thing in
general. We shall have a fresh series of laughable images which will
be obtained by taking a blurred impression, so to speak, of the
outlines of the former and will bring us to this new law: WE LAUGH
EVERY TIME A PERSON GIVES US THE IMPRESSION OF BEING A THING.
We laugh at Sancho Panza tumbled into a bed-quilt and tossed into
the air like a football. We laugh at Baron Munchausen turned into a
cannon-ball and travelling through space. But certain tricks of
circus clowns might afford a still more precise exemplification of
the same law. True, we should have to eliminate the jokes, mere
interpolations by the clown into his main theme, and keep in mind
only the theme itself, that is to say, the divers attitudes, capers
and movements which form the strictly “clownish” element in the
clown’s art. On two occasions only have I been able to observe this
style of the comic in its unadulterated state, and in both I
received the same impression. The first time, the clowns came and
went, collided, fell and jumped up again in a uniformly accelerated
rhythm, visibly intent upon affecting a CRESCENDO. And it was more
and more to the jumping up again, the REBOUND, that the attention of
the public was attracted. Gradually, one lost sight of the fact that
they were men of flesh and blood like ourselves; one began to think
of bundles of all sorts, falling and knocking against each other.
Then the vision assumed a more definite aspect. The forms grew
rounder, the bodies rolled together and seemed to pick themselves up
like balls. Then at last appeared the image towards which the whole
of this scene had doubtless been unconsciously evolving—large
rubber balls hurled against one another in every direction. The
second scene, though even coarser than the first, was no less
instructive. There came on the stage two men, each with an enormous
head, bald as a billiard ball. In their hands they carried large
sticks which each, in turn, brought down on to the other’s cranium.
Here, again, a certain gradation was observable. After each blow,
the bodies seemed to grow heavier and more unyielding, overpowered
by an increasing degree of rigidity. Then came the return blow, in
each case heavier and more resounding than the last, coming, too,
after a longer interval. The skulls gave forth a formidable ring
throughout the silent house. At last the two bodies, each quite
rigid and as straight as an arrow, slowly bent over towards each
other, the sticks came crashing down for the last time on to the two
heads with a thud as of enormous mallets falling upon oaken beams,
and the pair lay prone upon the ground. At that instant appeared in
all its vividness the suggestion that the two artists had gradually
driven into the imagination of the spectators: “We are about to
become …we have now become solid wooden dummies.”
A kind of dim, vague instinct may enable even an uncultured mind to
get an inkling here of the subtler results of psychological science.
We know that it is possible to call up hallucinatory visions in a
hypnotised subject by simple suggestion. If he be told that a bird
is perched on his hand, he will see the bird and watch it fly away.
The idea suggested, however, is far from being always accepted with
like docility. Not infrequently, the mesmeriser only succeeds in
getting an idea into his subject’s head by slow degrees through a
carefully graduated series of hints. He will then start with objects
really perceived by the subject, and will endeavour to make the
perception of these objects more and more indefinite; then, step by
step, he will bring out of this state of mental chaos the precise
form of the object of which he wishes to create an hallucination.
Something of the kind happens to many people when dropping off to
sleep; they see those coloured, fluid, shapeless masses, which
occupy the field of vision, insensibly solidifying into distinct
objects.
Consequently, the gradual passing from the dim and vague to the
clear and distinct is the method of suggestion par excellence. I
fancy it might be found to be at the root of a good many comic
suggestions, especially in the coarser forms of the comic, in which
the transformation of a person into a thing seems to be taking place
before our eyes. But there are other and more subtle methods in use,
among poets, for instance, which perhaps unconsciously lead to the
same end. By a certain arrangement of rhythm, rhyme and assonance,
it is possible to lull the imagination, to rock it to and fro
between like and like with a regular see-saw motion, and thus
prepare it submissively to accept the vision suggested. Listen to
these few lines of Regnard, and see whether something like the
fleeting image of a DOLL does not cross the field of your
imagination:
… Plus, il doit a maints particuliers La somme de dix mil une
livre une obole, Pour l’avoir sans relache un an sur sa parole
Habille, voiture, chauffe, chausse, gante, Alimente, rase,
desaltere, porte.
[Footnote: Further, he owes to many an honest wight Item-the sum
two thousand pounds, one farthing, For having on his simple word of
honour Sans intermission for an entire year Clothed him, conveyed
him, warmed him, shod him, gloved him, Fed him and shaved him,
quenched his thirst and borne him.]
Is not something of the same kind found in the following sally of
Figaro’s (though here an attempt is perhaps made to suggest the
image of an animal rather than that of a thing): “Quel homme est-ce?—C’est un beau, gros, court, jeune vieillard, gris pommele,
ruse, rase, blase, qui guette et furette, et gronde et geint tout a
la fois.” [Footnote: “What sort of man is here?—He is a handsome,
stout, short, youthful old gentleman, iron-grey, an artful knave,
clean shaved, clean ‘used up,’ who spies and pries and growls and
groans all in the same breath.”]
Now, between these coarse scenes and these subtle suggestions there
is room for a countless number of amusing effects, for all those
that can be obtained by talking about persons as one would do about
mere things. We will only select one or two instances from the plays
of Labiche, in which they are legion.
Just as M. Perrichon is getting into the railway carriage, he makes
certain of not forgetting any of his parcels: “Four, five, six, my
wife seven, my daughter eight, and myself nine.” In another play, a
fond father is boasting of his daughter’s learning in the following
terms: “She will tell you, without faltering, all the kings of
France that have occurred.” This phrase, “that have occurred,”
though not exactly transforming the kings into mere things, likens
them, all the same, to events of an impersonal nature.
As regards this latter example, note that it is unnecessary to
complete the identification of the person with the thing in order to
ensure a comic effect. It is sufficient for us to start in this
direction by feigning, for instance, to confuse the person with the
function he exercises. I will only quote a sentence spoken by a
village mayor in one of About’s novels: “The prefect, who has always
shown us the same kindness, though he has been changed several times
since 1847…”
All these witticisms are constructed on the same model. We might
make up any number of them, when once we are in possession of the
recipe. But the art of the story-teller or the playwright does not
merely consist in concocting jokes. The difficulty lies in giving to
a joke its power of suggestion, i.e. in making it acceptable. And we
only do accept it either because it seems to be the natural product
of a particular state of mind or because it is in keeping with the
circumstances of the case. For instance, we are aware that M.
Perrichon is greatly excited on the occasion of his first railway
journey. The expression “to occur” is one that must have cropped up
a good many times in the lessons repeated by the girl before her
father; it makes us think of such a repetition. Lastly, admiration
of the governmental machine might, at a pinch, be extended to the
point of making us believe that no change takes place in the prefect
when he changes his name, and that the function gets carried on
independently of the functionary.
We have now reached a point very far from the original cause of
laughter. Many a comic form, that cannot be explained by itself, can
indeed only be understood from its resemblance to another, which
only makes us laugh by reason of its relationship with a third, and
so on indefinitely, so that psychological analysis, however luminous
and searching, will go astray unless it holds the thread along which
the comic impression has travelled from one end of the series to the
other. Where does this progressive continuity come from? What can be
the driving force, the strange impulse which causes the comic to
glide thus from image to image, farther and farther away from the
starting-point, until it is broken up and lost in infinitely remote
analogies? But what is that force which divides and subdivides the
branches of a tree into smaller boughs and its roots into radicles?
An inexorable law dooms every living energy, during the brief
interval allotted to it in time, to cover the widest possible extent
in space. Now, comic fancy is indeed a living energy, a strange
plant that has nourished on the stony portions of the social soil,
until such time as culture should allow it to vie with the most
refined products of art. True, we are far from great art in the
examples of the comic we have just been reviewing. But we shall draw
nearer to it, though without attaining to it completely, in the
following chapter. Below art, we find artifice, and it is this zone
of artifice, midway between nature
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