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

comic of this type. Twenty years ago, a large

steamer was wrecked off the coast at Dieppe. With considerable

difficulty some of the passengers were rescued in a boat. A few

custom-house officers, who had courageously rushed to their

assistance, began by asking them “if they had anything to declare.”

We find something similar, though the idea is a more subtle one, in

the remark of an M.P. when questioning the Home Secretary on the

morrow of a terrible murder which took place in a railway carriage:

“The assassin, after despatching his victim, must have got out the

wrong side of the train, thereby infringing the Company’s rules.”

 

A mechanical element introduced into nature and an automatic

regulation of society, such, then, are the two types of laughable

effects at which we have arrived. It remains for us, in conclusion,

to combine them and see what the result will be.

 

The result of the combination will evidently be a human regulation

of affairs usurping the place of the laws of nature. We may call to

mind the answer Sganarelle gave Geronte when the latter remarked

that the heart was on the left side and the liver on the right:

“Yes, it was so formerly, but we have altered all that; now, we

practise medicine in quite a new way.” We may also recall the

consultation between M. de Pourceaugnac’s two doctors: “The

arguments you have used are so erudite and elegant that it is

impossible for the patient not to be hypochondriacally melancholic;

or, even if he were not, he must surely become so because of the

elegance of the things you have said and the accuracy of your

reasoning.” We might multiply examples, for all we need do would be

to call up Moliere’s doctors, one after the other. However far,

moreover, comic fancy may seem to go, reality at times undertakes to

improve upon it. It was suggested to a contemporary philosopher, an

out-and-out arguer, that his arguments, though irreproachable in

their deductions, had experience against them. He put an end to the

discussion by merely remarking, “Experience is in the wrong.” The

truth is, this idea of regulating life as a matter of business

routine is more widespread than might be imagined; it is natural in

its way, although we have just obtained it by an artificial process

of reconstruction. One might say that it gives us the very

quintessence of pedantry, which, at bottom, is nothing else than art

pretending to outdo nature.

 

To sum up, then, we have one and the same effect, which assumes ever

subtler forms as it passes from the idea of an artificial

MECHANISATION of the human body, if such an expression is

permissible, to that of any substitution whatsoever of the

artificial for the natural. A less and less rigorous logic, that

more and more resembles the logic of dreamland, transfers the same

relationship into higher and higher spheres, between increasingly

immaterial terms, till in the end we find a mere administrative

enactment occupying the same relation to a natural or moral law that

a ready-made garment, for instance, does to the living body. We have

now gone right to the end of the first of the three directions we

had to follow. Let us turn to the second and see where it will lead

us.

 

2. Our starting-point is again “something mechanical encrusted upon

the living.” Where did the comic come from in this case? It came

from the fact that the living body became rigid, like a machine.

Accordingly, it seemed to us that the living body ought to be the

perfection of suppleness, the ever-alert activity of a principle

always at work. But this activity would really belong to the soul

rather than to the body. It would be the very flame of life, kindled

within us by a higher principle and perceived through the body, as

if through a glass. When we see only gracefulness and suppleness in

the living body, it is because we disregard in it the elements of

weight, of resistance, and, in a word, of matter; we forget its

materiality and think only of its vitality, a vitality which we

regard as derived from the very principle of intellectual and moral

life, Let us suppose, however, that our attention is drawn to this

material side of the body; that, so far from sharing in the

lightness and subtlety of the principle with which it is animated,

the body is no more in our eyes than a heavy and cumbersome vesture,

a kind of irksome ballast which holds down to earth a soul eager to

rise aloft. Then the body will become to the soul what, as we have

just seen, the garment was to the body itself—inert matter dumped

down upon living energy. The impression of the comic will be

produced as soon as we have a clear apprehension of this putting the

one on the other. And we shall experience it most strongly when we

are shown the soul TANTALISED by the needs of the body: on the one

hand, the moral personality with its intelligently varied energy,

and, on the other, the stupidly monotonous body, perpetually

obstructing everything with its machine-like obstinacy. The more

paltry and uniformly repeated these claims of the body, the more

striking will be the result. But that is only a matter of degree,

and the general law of these phenomena may be formulated as follows:

ANY INCIDENT IS COMIC THAT CALLS OUR ATTENTION TO THE PHYSICAL IN A

PERSON WHEN IT IS THE MORAL SIDE THAT IS CONCERNED.

 

Why do we laugh at a public speaker who sneezes just at the most

pathetic moment of his speech? Where lies the comic element in this

sentence, taken from a funeral speech and quoted by a German

philosopher: “He was virtuous and plump”? It lies in the fact that

our attention is suddenly recalled from the soul to the body.

Similar instances abound in daily life, but if you do not care to

take the trouble to look for them, you have only to open at random a

volume of Labiche, and you will be almost certain to light upon an

effect of this kind. Now, we have a speaker whose most eloquent

sentences are cut short by the twinges of a bad tooth; now, one of

the characters who never begins to speak without stopping in the

middle to complain of his shoes being too small, or his belt too

tight, etc. A PERSON EMBARRASSED BY HIS BODY is the image suggested

to us in all these examples. The reason that excessive stoutness is

laughable is probably because it calls up an image of the same kind.

I almost think that this too is what sometime makes bashfulness

somewhat ridiculous. The bashful man rather gives the impression of

a person embarrassed by his body, looking round for some convenient

cloak-room in which to deposit it.

 

This is just why the tragic poet is so careful to avoid anything

calculated to attract attention to the material side of his heroes.

No sooner does anxiety about the body manifest itself than the

intrusion of a comic element is to be feared. On this account, the

hero in a tragedy does not eat or drink or warm himself. He does not

even sit down any more than can be helped. To sit down in the middle

of a fine speech would imply that you remembered you had a body.

Napoleon, who was a psychologist when he wished to be so, had

noticed that the transition from tragedy to comedy is effected

simply by sitting down. In the “Journal inedit” of Baron Gourgaud—

when speaking of an interview with the Queen of Prussia after the

battle of Iena—he expresses himself in the following terms: “She

received me in tragic fashion like Chimene: Justice! Sire, Justice!

Magdeburg! Thus she continued in a way most embarrassing to me.

Finally, to make her change her style, I requested her to take a

seat. This is the best method for cutting short a tragic scene, for

as soon as you are seated it all becomes comedy.”

 

Let us now give a wider scope to this image of THE BODY TAKING

PRECEDENCE OF THE SOUL. We shall obtain something more general—THE

MANNER SEEKING TO OUTDO THE MATTER, THE LETTER AIMING AT OUSTING THE

SPIRIT. Is it not perchance this idea that comedy is trying to

suggest to us when holding up a profession to ridicule? It makes the

lawyer, the magistrate and the doctor speak as though health and

justice were of little moment,—the main point being that we should

have lawyers, magistrates and doctors, and that all outward

formalities pertaining to these professions should be scrupulously

respected. And so we find the means substituted for the end, the

manner for the matter; no longer is it the profession that is made

for the public, but rather the public for the profession. Constant

attention to form and the mechanical application of rules here bring

about a kind of professional automatism analogous to that imposed

upon the soul by the habits of the body, and equally laughable.

Numerous are the examples of this on the stage. Without entering

into details of the variations executed on this theme, let us quote

two or three passages in which the theme itself is set forth in all

its simplicity. “You are only bound to treat people according to

form,” says Doctor Diafoirus in the “Malade imaginaire”. Again, says

Doctor Bahis, in “L’Amour medecin”: “It is better to die through

following the rules than to recover through violating them.” In the

same play, Desfonandres had previously said: “We must always observe

the formalities of professional etiquette, whatever may happen.” And

the reason is given by Tomes, his colleague: “A dead man is but a

dead man, but the non-observance of a formality causes a notable

prejudice to the whole faculty.” Brid’oison’s words, though.

embodying a rather different idea, are none the less significant:

“F-form, mind you, f-form. A man laughs at a judge in a morning

coat, and yet he would quake with dread at the mere sight of an

attorney in his gown. F-form, all a matter of f-form.”

 

Here we have the first illustration of a law which will appear with

increasing distinctness as we proceed with our task. When a musician

strikes a note on an instrument, other notes start up of themselves,

not so loud as the first, yet connected with it by certain definite

relations, which coalesce with it and determine its quality. These

are what are called in physics the overtones of the fundamental

note. It would seem that comic fancy, even in its most far-fetched

inventions, obeys a similar law. For instance, consider this comic

note: appearance seeking to triumph over reality. If our analysis is

correct, this note must have as its overtones the body tantalising

the mind, the body taking precedence of the mind. No sooner, then,

does the comic poet strike the first note than he will add the

second on to it, involuntarily and instinctively. In other words, HE

WILL DUPLICATE WHAT IS RIDICULOUS PROFESSIONALLY WITH SOMETHING THAT

IS RIDICULOUS PHYSICALLY.

 

When Brid’oison the judge comes stammering on to the stage, is he

not actually preparing us, by this very stammering, to understand

the phenomenon of intellectual ossification we are about to witness?

What bond of secret relationship can there be between the physical

defect and the moral infirmity? It is difficult to say; yet we feel

that the relationship is there, though we cannot express it in

words. Perhaps the situation required that this judging machine

should also appear before us as a talking machine. However it may

be, no other overtone could more perfectly have completed the

fundamental note.

 

When Moliere introduces to us the two ridiculous doctors, Bahis and

Macroton, in L’Amour medecin, he makes