Laughter, Henri Bergson [good novels to read txt] 📗

between offensive

frankness and delusive politeness, this duel between two opposing

feelings will not even then be comic, rather it will appear the

essence of seriousness if these two feelings through their very

distinctness complete each other, develop side by side, and make up

between them a composite mental condition, adopting, in short, a

modus vivendi which merely gives us the complex impression of life.

But imagine these two feelings as INELASTIC and unvarying elements

in a really living man, make him oscillate from one to the other;

above all, arrange that this oscillation becomes entirely mechanical

by adopting the well-known form of some habitual, simple, childish

contrivance: then you will get the image we have so far found in all

laughable objects, SOMETHING MECHANICAL IN SOMETHING LIVING; in

fact, something comic.

 

We have dwelt on this first image, the Jack-in-the-box, sufficiently

to show how comic fancy gradually converts a material mechanism into

a moral one. Now we will consider one or two other games, confining

ourselves to their most striking aspects.

 

2. THE DANCING-JACK.—There are innumerable comedies in which one of

the characters thinks he is speaking and acting freely, and,

consequently, retains all the essentials of life, whereas, viewed

from a certain standpoint, he appears as a mere toy in the hands of

another who is playing with him. The transition is easily made, from

the dancing-jack which a child works with a string, to Geronte and

Argante manipulated by Scapin. Listen to Scapin himself: “The

MACHINE is all there”; and again: “Providence has brought them into

my net,” etc. Instinctively, and because one would rather be a cheat

than be cheated, in imagination at all events, the spectator sides

with the knaves; and for the rest of the time, like a child who has

persuaded his playmate to lend him his doll, he takes hold of the

strings himself and makes the marionette come and go on the stage as

he pleases. But this latter condition is not indispensable; we can

remain outside the pale of what is taking place if only we retain

the distinct impression of a mechanical arrangement. This is what

happens whenever one of the characters vacillates between two

contrary opinions, each in turn appealing to him, as when Panurge

asks Tom, Dick, and Harry whether or no he ought to get married.

Note that, in such a case, a comic author is always careful to

PERSONIFY the two opposing decisions. For, if there is no spectator,

there must at all events be actors to hold the strings.

 

All that is serious in life comes from our freedom. The feelings we

have matured, the passions we have brooded over, the actions we have

weighed, decided upon, and carried through, in short, all that comes

from us and is our very own, these are the things that give life its

ofttimes dramatic and generally grave aspect. What, then, is

requisite to transform all this into a comedy? Merely to fancy that

our seeming, freedom conceals the strings of a dancing-Jack, and

that we are, as the poet says,

 

… humble marionettes The wires of which are pulled by Fate.

[Footnote: … d’humbles marionnettes Dont le fil est aux mains de

la Necessite. SULLY-PRUDHOMME.]

 

So there is not a real, a serious, or even a dramatic scene that

fancy cannot render comic by simply calling forth this image. Nor is

there a game for which a wider field lies open.

 

3. THE SNOWBALL.—The farther we proceed in this investigation into

the methods of comedy, the more clearly we see the part played by

childhood’s memories. These memories refer, perhaps, less to any

special game than to the mechanical device of which that game is a

particular instance. The same general device, moreover, may be met

with in widely different games, just as the same operatic air is

found in many different arrangements and variations. What is here of

importance and is retained in the mind, what passes by imperceptible

stages from the games of a child to those of a man, is the mental

diagram, the skeleton outline of the combination, or, if you like,

the abstract formula of which these games are particular

illustrations. Take, for instance, the rolling snowball, which

increases in size as it moves along. We might just as well think of

toy soldiers standing behind one another. Push the first and it

tumbles down on the second, this latter knocks down the third, and

the state of things goes from bad to worse until they all lie prone

on the floor. Or again, take a house of cards that has been built up

with infinite care: the first you touch seems uncertain whether to

move or not, its tottering neighbour comes to a quicker decision,

and the work of destruction, gathering momentum as it goes on,

rushes headlong to the final collapse.

 

These instances are all different, but they suggest the same

abstract vision, that of an effect which grows by arithmetical

progression, so that the cause, insignificant at the outset,

culminates by a necessary evolution in a result as important as it

is unexpected. Now let us open a children’s picture-book; we shall

find this arrangement already on the high road to becoming comic.

Here, for instance—in one of the comic chap-books picked up by

chance—we have a caller rushing violently into a drawing-room; he

knocks against a lady, who upsets her cup of tea over an old

gentleman, who slips against a glass window which falls in the

street on to the head of a constable, who sets the whole police

force agog, etc. The same arrangement reappears in many a picture

intended for grownup persons. In the “stories without words”

sketched by humorous artists we are often shown an object which

moves from place to place, and persons who are closely connected

with it, so that through a series of scenes a change in the position

of the object mechanically brings about increasingly serious changes

in the situation of the persons. Let us now turn to comedy. Many a

droll scene, many a comedy even, may be referred to this simple

type. Read the speech of Chicanneau in the Plaideurs: here we find

lawsuits within lawsuits, and the mechanism works faster and faster-

-Racine produces in us this feeling of increasing acceleration by

crowding his law terms ever closer together—until the lawsuit over

a truss of hay costs the plaintiff the best part of his fortune. And

again the same arrangement occurs in certain scenes of Don Quixote;

for instance, in the inn scene, where, by an extraordinary

concatenation of circumstances, the mule-driver strikes Sancho, who

belabours Maritornes, upon whom the innkeeper falls, etc. Finally,

let us pass to the light comedy of to-day. Need we call to mind all

the forms in which this same combination appears? There is one that

is employed rather frequently. For instance, a certain thing, say a

letter, happens to be of supreme importance to a certain person and

must be recovered at all costs. This thing, which always vanishes

just when you think you have caught it, pervades the entire play,

“rolling up” increasingly serious and unexpected incidents as it

proceeds. All this is far more like a child’s game than appears at

first blush. Once more the effect produced is that of the snowball.

 

It is the characteristic of a mechanical combination to be generally

REVERSIBLE. A child is delighted when he sees the ball in a game of

ninepins knocking down everything in its way and spreading havoc in

all directions; he laughs louder than ever when the ball returns to

its starting-point after twists and turns and waverings of every

kind. In other words, the mechanism just described is laughable even

when rectilinear, it is much more so on becoming circular and when

every effort the player makes, by a fatal interaction of cause and

effect, merely results in bringing it back to the same spot. Now, a

considerable number of light comedies revolve round this idea. An

Italian straw hat has been eaten up by a horse. [Footnote: Un

Chapeau de paille d’Italie (Labiche).] There is only one other hat

like it in the whole of Paris; it MUST be secured regardless of

cost. This hat, which always slips away at the moment its capture

seems inevitable, keeps the principal character on the run, and

through him all the others who hang, so to say, on to his coat

tails, like a magnet which, by a successive series of attractions,

draws along in its train the grains of iron filings that hang on to

each other. And when at last, after all sorts of difficulties, the

goal seems in sight, it is found that the hat so ardently sought is

precisely the one that has been eaten. The same voyage of discovery

is depicted in another equally well-known comedy of Labiche.

[Footnote: La Cagnotte.] The curtain rises on an old bachelor and an

old maid, acquaintances of long standing, at the moment of enjoying

their daily rubber. Each of them, unknown to the other, has applied

to the same matrimonial agency. Through innumerable difficulties,

one mishap following on the heels of another, they hurry along, side

by side, right through the play, to the interview which brings them

back, purely and simply, into each other’s presence. We have the

same circular effect, the same return to the starting-point, in a

more recent play. [Footnote: Les Surprises du divorce.] A henpecked

husband imagines he has escaped by divorce from the clutches of his

wife and his mother-in-law. He marries again, when, lo and behold,

the double combination of marriage and divorce brings back to him

his former wife in the aggravated form of a second mother-in-law!

 

When we think how intense and how common is this type of the comic,

we understand why it has fascinated the imagination of certain

philosophers. To cover a good deal of ground only to come back

unwittingly to the starting-point, is to make a great effort for a

result that is nil. So we might be tempted to define the comic in

this latter fashion. And such, indeed, seems to be the idea of

Herbert Spencer: according to him, laughter is the indication of an

effort which suddenly encounters a void. Kant had already said

something of the kind: “Laughter is the result of an expectation,

which, of a sudden, ends in nothing.” No doubt these definitions

would apply to the last few examples given, although, even then, the

formula needs the addition of sundry limitations, for we often make

an ineffectual effort which is in no way provocative of laughter.

While, however, the last few examples are illustrations of a great

cause resulting in a small effect, we quoted others, immediately

before, which might be defined inversely as a great effect springing

from a small cause. The truth is, this second definition has

scarcely more validity than the first. Lack of proportion between

cause and effect, whether appearing in one or in the other, is never

the direct source of laughter. What we do laugh at is something that

this lack of proportion may in certain cases disclose, namely, a

particular mechanical arrangement which it reveals to us, as through

a glass, at the back of the series of effects and causes. Disregard

this arrangement, and you let go the only clue capable of guiding

you through the labyrinth of the comic. Any hypothesis you otherwise

would select, while possibly applicable to a few carefully chosen

cases, is liable at any moment to be met and overthrown by the first

unsuitable instance that comes along.

 

But why is it we laugh at this mechanical arrangement? It is

doubtless strange that the history of a person or of a group should

sometimes appear like a game worked by strings, or gearings, or

springs; but from what source does