readenglishbook.com » Psychology » Laughter, Henri Bergson [good novels to read txt] 📗

Book online «Laughter, Henri Bergson [good novels to read txt] 📗». Author Henri Bergson



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 22
Go to page:
etext,

[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,

or [3] any Defect.

 

DISTRIBUTION UNDER “PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm”

You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by

disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this

“Small Print!” and all other references to Project Gutenberg,

or:

 

[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this

requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the

etext or this “small print!” statement. You may however,

if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable

binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,

including any form resulting from conversion by word

processing or hypertext software, but only so long as

EITHER:

 

[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and

does not contain characters other than those

intended by the author of the work, although tilde

(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may

be used to convey punctuation intended by the

author, and additional characters may be used to

indicate hypertext links; OR

 

[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at

no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent

form by the program that displays the etext (as is

the case, for instance, with most word processors);

OR

[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at

no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the

etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC

or other equivalent proprietary form).

 

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this

“Small Print!” statement.

 

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the

gross profits you derive calculated using the method you

already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you

don’t derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are

payable to “Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation”

the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were

legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent

periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to

let us know your plans and to work out the details.

 

WHAT IF YOU WANT TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO?

Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of

public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed

in machine readable form.

 

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,

public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.

Money should be paid to the:

“Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

 

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or

software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:

hart@pobox.com

 

[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart

and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]

[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales

of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or

software or any other related product without express permission.]

 

END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTSVer.10/04/01*END*

 

Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

LAUGHTER

AN ESSAY ON THE MEANING OF THE COMIC

BY HENRI BERGSON

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION

BY CLOUDESLEY BRERETON L. ES L. (PARIS), M.A. (CANTAB)

AND FRED ROTHWELL B.A. (LONDON)

 

TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE

 

This work, by Professor Bergson, has been revised in detail by the

author himself, and the present translation is the only authorised

one. For this ungrudging labour of revision, for the thoroughness

with which it has been carried out, and for personal sympathy in

many a difficulty of word and phrase, we desire to offer our

grateful acknowledgment to Professor Bergson. It may be pointed out

that the essay on Laughter originally appeared in a series of three

articles in one of the leading magazines in France, the Revue de

Paris. This will account for the relatively simple form of the work

and the comparative absence of technical terms. It will also explain

why the author has confined himself to exposing and illustrating his

novel theory of the comic without entering into a detailed

discussion of other explanations already in the field. He none the

less indicates, when discussing sundry examples, why the principal

theories, to which they have given rise, appear to him inadequate.

To quote only a few, one may mention those based on contrast,

exaggeration, and degradation.

 

The book has been highly successful in France, where it is in its

seventh edition. It has been translated into Russian, Polish, and

Swedish. German and Hungarian translations are under preparation.

Its success is due partly to the novelty of the explanation offered

of the comic, and partly also to the fact that the author

incidentally discusses questions of still greater interest and

importance. Thus, one of the best known and most frequently quoted

passages of the book is that portion of the last chapter in which

the author outlines a general theory of art.

 

C. B. F. R.

CONTENTS CHAPTER I

THE COMIC IN GENERAL—THE COMIC ELEMENT IN FORMS AND MOVEMENTS—

EXPANSIVE FORCE OF THE COMIC CHAPTER II

THE COMIC ELEMENT IN SITUATIONS AND THE COMIC ELEMENT IN WORDS

CHAPTER III THE COMIC IN CHARACTER
CHAPTER I

THE COMIC IN GENERAL—THE COMIC ELEMENT IN FORMS AND MOVEMENTS—

EXPANSIVE FORCE OF THE COMIC.

 

What does laughter mean? What is the basal element in the laughable?

What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and

a scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will yield us

invariably the same essence from which so many different products

borrow either their obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume? The

greatest of thinkers, from Aristotle downwards, have tackled this

little problem, which has a knack of baffling every effort, of

slipping away and escaping only to bob up again, a pert challenge

flung at philosophic speculation. Our excuse for attacking the

problem in our turn must lie in the fact that we shall not aim at

imprisoning the comic spirit within a definition. We regard it,

above all, as a living thing. However trivial it may be, we shall

treat it with the respect due to life. We shall confine ourselves to

watching it grow and expand. Passing by imperceptible gradations

from one form to another, it will be seen to achieve the strangest

metamorphoses. We shall disdain nothing we have seen. Maybe we may

gain from this prolonged contact, for the matter of that, something

more flexible than an abstract definition,—a practical, intimate

acquaintance, such as springs from a long companionship. And maybe

we may also find that, unintentionally, we have made an acquaintance

that is useful. For the comic spirit has a logic of its own, even in

its wildest eccentricities. It has a method in its madness. It

dreams, I admit, but it conjures up, in its dreams, visions that are

at once accepted and understood by the whole of a social group. Can

it then fail to throw light for us on the way that human imagination

works, and more particularly social, collective, and popular

imagination? Begotten of real life and akin to art, should it not

also have something of its own to tell us about art and life?

 

At the outset we shall put forward three observations which we look

upon as fundamental. They have less bearing on the actually comic

than on the field within which it must be sought.

I

The first point to which attention should be called is that the

comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly HUMAN. A

landscape may be beautiful, charming and sublime, or insignificant

and ugly; it will never be laughable. You may laugh at an animal,

but only because you have detected in it some human attitude or

expression. You may laugh at a hat, but what you are making fun of,

in this case, is not the piece of felt or straw, but the shape that

men have given it,—the human caprice whose mould it has assumed. It

is strange that so important a fact, and such a simple one too, has

not attracted to a greater degree the attention of philosophers.

Several have defined man as “an animal which laughs.” They might

equally well have defined him as an animal which is laughed at; for

if any other animal, or some lifeless object, produces the same

effect, it is always because of some resemblance to man, of the

stamp he gives it or the use he puts it to.

 

Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the

ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as

though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it

fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm

and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter

has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not

laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even

with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our

affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a

society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no

more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas

highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every

event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither

know nor understand laughter. Try, for a moment, to become

interested in everything that is being said and done; act, in

imagination, with those who act, and feel with those who feel; in a

word, give your sympathy its widest expansion: as though at the

touch of a fairy wand you will see the flimsiest of objects assume

importance, and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside,

look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn

into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of

music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once

to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar

test? Should we not see many of them suddenly pass from grave to

gay, on isolating them from the accompanying music of sentiment? To

produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic demands something

like a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal is to

intelligence, pure and simple.

 

This intelligence, however, must always remain in touch with other

intelligences. And here is the third fact to which attention should

be drawn. You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself

isolated from others. Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo,

Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined

sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by

reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash,

to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain.

Still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel

within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the

less, a closed one. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.

It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway

carriage or at table d’hote, to hear travellers relating to one

another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed

heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would have laughed

like them; but, as you were not, you had no desire whatever to do

so. A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon, when

everybody else was shedding tears, replied: “I don’t belong to the

parish!” What that man thought of tears would be still more true of

laughter. However spontaneous

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 22
Go to page:

Free e-book «Laughter, Henri Bergson [good novels to read txt] 📗» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment