Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
beneath a large door; two individuals, one very tall the other a mere
dwarf, gravely walking along arm-in-arm, etc. By scanning narrowly this
latter image, we shall probably find that the shorter of the two
persons seems as though he were trying TO RAISE HIMSELF to the height
of the taller, like the frog that wanted to make itself as large as the
ox.
III
It would be quite impossible to go through all the peculiarities of
character that either coalesce or compete with vanity in order to force
themselves upon the attention of the comic poet. We have shown that all
failings may become laughable, and even, occasionally, many a good
quality. Even though a list of all the peculiarities that have ever
been found ridiculous were drawn up, comedy would manage to add to
them, not indeed by creating artificial ones, but by discovering lines
of comic development that had hitherto gone unnoticed; thus does
imagination isolate ever fresh figures in the intricate design of one
and the same piece of tapestry. The essential condition, as we know, is
that the peculiarity observed should straightway appear as a kind of
CATEGORY into which a number of individuals can step.
Now, there are ready-made categories established by society itself, and
necessary to it because it is based on the division of labour. We mean
the various trades, public services and professions. Each particular
profession impresses on its corporate members certain habits of mind
and peculiarities of character in which they resemble each other and
also distinguish themselves from the rest. Small societies are thus
formed within the bosom of Society at large. Doubtless they arise from
the very organisation of Society as a whole. And yet, if they held too
much aloof, there would be a risk of their proving harmful to
sociability.
Now, it is the business of laughter to repress any separatist tendency.
Its function is to convert rigidity into plasticity, to readapt the
individual to the whole, in short, to round off the corners wherever
they are met with. Accordingly, we here find a species of the comic
whose varieties might be calculated beforehand. This we shall call the
PROFESSIONAL COMIC.
Instead of taking up these varieties in detail, we prefer to lay stress
upon what they have in common. In the forefront we find professional
vanity. Each one of M. Jourdain's teachers exalts his own art above all
the rest. In a play of Labiche there is a character who cannot
understand how it is possible to be anything else than a timber
merchant. Naturally he is a timber merchant himself. Note that vanity
here tends to merge into SOLEMNITY, in proportion to the degree of
quackery there is in the profession under consideration. For it is a
remarkable fact that the more questionable an art, science or
occupation is, the more those who practise it are inclined to regard
themselves as invested with a kind of priesthood and to claim that all
should bow before its mysteries. Useful professions are clearly meant
for the public, but those whose utility is more dubious can only
justify their existence by assuming that the public is meant for them:
now, this is just the illusion that lies at the root of solemnity.
Almost everything comic in Moliere's doctors comes from this source.
They treat the patient as though he had been made for the doctors, and
nature herself as an appendage to medicine.
Another form of this comic rigidity is what may be called PROFESSIONAL
CALLOUSNESS. The comic character is so tightly jammed into the rigid
frame of his functions that he has no room to move or to be moved like
other men. Only call to mind the answer Isabelle receives from Perrin
Dandin, the judge, when she asks him how he can bear to look on when
the poor wretches are being tortured: Bah! cela fait toujours passer
une heure ou deux.
[Footnote: Bah! it always helps to while away an hour or two.]
Does not Tartuffe also manifest a sort of professional callousness when
he says--it is true, by the mouth of Orgon: Et je verrais mourir frere,
enfants, mere et femme, Que je m'en soucierais autant que de cela!
[Footnote: Let brother, children, mother and wife all die, what should
I care!]
The device most in use, however, for making a profession ludicrous is
to confine it, so to say, within the four corners of its own particular
jargon. Judge, doctor and soldier are made to apply the language of
law, medicine and strategy to the everyday affairs of life, as though
they had became incapable of talking like ordinary people. As a rule,
this kind of the ludicrous is rather coarse. It becomes more refined,
however, as we have already said, if it reveals some peculiarity of
character in addition to a professional habit. We will instance only
Regnard's Joueur, who expresses himself with the utmost originality in
terms borrowed from gambling, giving his valet the name of Hector, and
calling his betrothed Pallas, du nom connu de la Dame de Pique;
[Footnote: Pallas, from the well-known name of the Queen of Spades.] or
Moliere's Femmes savantes, where the comic element evidently consists
largely in the translation of ideas of a scientific nature into terms
of feminine sensibility: "Epicure me plait..." (Epicurus is charming),
"J'aime les tourbillons" (I dote on vortices), etc. You have only to
read the third act to find that Armande, Philaminte and Belise almost
invariably express themselves in this style.
Proceeding further in the same direction, we discover that there is
also such a thing as a professional logic, i.e. certain ways of
reasoning that are customary in certain circles, which are valid for
these circles, but untrue for the rest of the public. Now, the contrast
between these two kinds of logic--one particular, the other
universal--produces comic effects of a special nature, on which we may
advantageously dwell at greater length. Here we touch upon a point of
some consequence in the theory of laughter. We propose, therefore, to
give the question a wider scope and consider it in its most general
aspect.
IV
Eager as we have been to discover the deep-seated cause of the comic,
we have so far had to neglect one of its most striking phenomena. We
refer to the logic peculiar to the comic character and the comic group,
a strange kind of logic, which, in some cases, may include a good deal
of absurdity.
Theophile Gautier said that the comic in its extreme form was the logic
of the absurd. More than one philosophy of laughter revolves round a
like idea. Every comic effect, it is said, implies contradiction in
some of its aspects. What makes us laugh is alleged to be the absurd
realised in concrete shape, a "palpable absurdity";--or, again, an
apparent absurdity, which we swallow for the moment only to rectify it
immediately afterwards;--or, better still, something absurd from one
point of view though capable of a natural explanation from another,
etc. All these theories may contain some portion of the truth; but, in
the first place, they apply only to certain rather obvious comic
effects, and then, even where they do apply, they evidently take no
account of the characteristic element of the laughable, that is, the
PARTICULAR KIND of absurdity the comic contains when it does contain
something absurd. Is an immediate proof of this desired? You have only
to choose one of these definitions and make up effects in accordance
with the formula: twice out of every three times there will be nothing
laughable in the effect obtained. So we see that absurdity, when met
with in the comic, is not absurdity IN GENERAL. It is an absurdity of a
definite kind. It does not create the comic; rather, we might say that
the comic infuses into it its own particular essence. It is not a
cause, but an effect--an effect of a very special kind, which reflects
the special nature of its cause. Now, this cause is known to us;
consequently we shall have no trouble in understanding the nature of
the effect.
Assume, when out for a country walk, that you notice on the top of a
hill something that bears a faint resemblance to a large motionless
body with revolving arms. So far you do not know what it is, but you
begin to search amongst your IDEAS--that is to say, in the present
instance, amongst the recollections at your disposal--for that
recollection which will best fit in with what you see. Almost
immediately the image of a windmill comes into your mind: the object
before you is a windmill. No matter if, before leaving the house, you
have just been reading fairy-tales telling of giants with enormous
arms; for although common sense consists mainly in being able to
remember, it consists even more in being able to forget. Common sense
represents the endeavour of a mind continually adapting itself anew and
changing ideas when it changes objects. It is the mobility of the
intelligence conforming exactly to the mobility of things. It is the
moving continuity of our attention to life. But now, let us take Don
Quixote setting out for the wars. The romances he has been reading all
tell of knights encountering, on the way, giant adversaries. He
therefore must needs encounter a giant. This idea of a giant is a
privileged recollection which has taken its abode in his mind and lies
there in wait, motionless, watching for an opportunity to sally forth
and become embodied in a thing. It IS BENT on entering the material
world, and so the very first object he sees bearing the faintest
resemblance to a giant is invested with the form of one. Thus Don
Quixote sees giants where we see windmills. This is comical; it is also
absurd. But is it a mere absurdity,--an absurdity of an indefinite kind?
It is a very special inversion of common sense. It consists in seeking
to mould things on an idea of one's own, instead of moulding one's
ideas on things,--in seeing before us what we are thinking of, instead
of thinking of what we see. Good sense would have us leave all our
memories in their proper rank and file; then the appropriate memory
will every time answer the summons of the situation of the moment and
serve only to interpret it. But in Don Quixote, on the contrary, there
is one group of memories in command of all the rest and dominating the
character itself: thus it is reality that now has to bow to
imagination, its only function being to supply fancy with a body. Once
the illusion has been created, Don Quixote develops it logically enough
in all its consequences; he proceeds with the certainty and precision
of a somnambulist who is acting his dream. Such, then, is the origin of
his delusions, and such the particular logic which controls this
particular absurdity. Now, is this logic peculiar to Don Quixote?
We have shown that the comic character always errs through obstinacy of
mind or of disposition, through absentmindedness, in short, through
automatism. At the root of the comic there is a sort of rigidity which
compels its victims to keep strictly to one path, to follow it straight
along, to shut their ears and refuse to listen. In Moliere's plays how
many comic scenes can be reduced to this simple type: A CHARACTER
FOLLOWING UP HIS ONE IDEA, and continually recurring to it in spite of
incessant interruptions! The transition seems to take place
imperceptibly from the man who will listen to nothing to the one who
will see nothing, and from this latter to the one who sees only what he
wants to see. A stubborn spirit ends by adjusting things to its own way
of thinking, instead of accommodating its thoughts to the things. So
every comic character is on the highroad to the above-mentioned
illusion, and Don Quixote furnishes us with the general type of comic
absurdity.
Is there a name for this inversion of common sense? Doubtless it may be
found, in either an acute or a chronic form, in certain types of