Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
has never yet seen. It would excel alike in every art at the same time;
or rather, it would fuse them all into one. It would perceive all
things in their native purity: the forms, colours, sounds of the
physical world as well as the subtlest movements of the inner life. But
this is asking too much of nature. Even for such of us as she has made
artists, it is by accident, and on one side only, that she has lifted
the veil. In one direction only has she forgotten to rivet the
perception to the need. And since each direction corresponds to what we
call a SENSE--through one of his senses, and through that sense alone,
is the artist usually wedded to art. Hence, originally, the diversity
of arts. Hence also the speciality of predispositions. This one applies
himself to colours and forms, and since he loves colour for colour and
form for form, since he perceives them for their sake and not for his
own, it is the inner life of things that he sees appearing through
their forms and colours. Little by little he insinuates it into our own
perception, baffled though we may be at the outset. For a few moments
at least, he diverts us from the prejudices of form and colour that
come between ourselves and reality. And thus he realises the loftiest
ambition of art, which here consists in revealing to us nature. Others,
again, retire within themselves. Beneath the thousand rudimentary
actions which are the outward and visible signs of an emotion, behind
the commonplace, conventional expression that both reveals and conceals
an individual mental state, it is the emotion, the original mood, to
which they attain in its undefiled essence. And then, to induce us to
make the same effort ourselves, they contrive to make us see something
of what they have seen: by rhythmical arrangement of words, which thus
become organised and animated with a life of their own, they tell
us--or rather suggest--things that speech was not calculated to
express. Others delve yet deeper still. Beneath these joys and sorrows
which can, at a pinch, be translated into language, they grasp
something that has nothing in common with language, certain rhythms of
life and breath that. are closer to man than his inmost feelings, being
the living law--varying with each individual--of his enthusiasm and
despair, his hopes and regrets. By setting free and emphasising this
music, they force it upon our attention; they compel us, willy-nilly,
to fall in with it, like passers-by who join in a dance. And thus they
impel us to set in motion, in the depths of our being, some secret
chord which was only waiting to thrill. So art, whether it be painting
or sculpture, poetry or music, has no other object than to brush aside
the utilitarian symbols, the conventional and socially accepted
generalities, in short, everything that veils reality from us, in order
to bring us face to face with reality itself. It is from a
misunderstanding on this point that the dispute between realism and
idealism in art has arisen. Art is certainly only a more direct vision
of reality. But this purity of perception implies a break with
utilitarian convention, an innate and specially localised
disinterestedness of sense or consciousness, in short, a certain
immateriality of life, which is what has always been called idealism.
So that we might say, without in any way playing upon the meaning of
the words, that realism is in the work when idealism is 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