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

one of them speak very

slowly, as though scanning his words syllable by syllable, whilst

the other stutters. We find the same contrast between the two

lawyers in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. In the rhythm of speech is

generally to be found the physical peculiarity that is destined to

complete the element of professional ridicule. When the author has

failed to suggest a defect of this kind, it is seldom the case that

the actor does not instinctively invent one.

 

Consequently, there is a natural relationship, which we equally

naturally recognise, between the two images we have been comparing

with each other, the mind crystallising in certain grooves, and the

body losing its elasticity through the influence of certain defects.

Whether or not our attention be diverted from the matter to the

manner, or from the moral to the physical, in both cases the same

sort of impression is conveyed to our imagination; in both, then,

the comic is of the same kind. Here, once more, it has been our aim

to follow the natural trend of the movement of the imagination. This

trend or direction, it may be remembered, was the second of those

offered to us, starting from a central image. A third and final path

remains unexplored, along which we will now proceed.

 

3. Let us then return, for the last time, to our central image:

something mechanical encrusted on something living. Here, the living

being under discussion was a human being, a person. A mechanical

arrangement, on the other hand, is a thing. What, therefore, incited

laughter was the momentary transformation of a person into a thing,

if one considers the image from this standpoint. Let us then pass

from the exact idea of a machine to the vaguer one of a thing in

general. We shall have a fresh series of laughable images which will

be obtained by taking a blurred impression, so to speak, of the

outlines of the former and will bring us to this new law: WE LAUGH

EVERY TIME A PERSON GIVES US THE IMPRESSION OF BEING A THING.

 

We laugh at Sancho Panza tumbled into a bed-quilt and tossed into

the air like a football. We laugh at Baron Munchausen turned into a

cannon-ball and travelling through space. But certain tricks of

circus clowns might afford a still more precise exemplification of

the same law. True, we should have to eliminate the jokes, mere

interpolations by the clown into his main theme, and keep in mind

only the theme itself, that is to say, the divers attitudes, capers

and movements which form the strictly “clownish” element in the

clown’s art. On two occasions only have I been able to observe this

style of the comic in its unadulterated state, and in both I

received the same impression. The first time, the clowns came and

went, collided, fell and jumped up again in a uniformly accelerated

rhythm, visibly intent upon affecting a CRESCENDO. And it was more

and more to the jumping up again, the REBOUND, that the attention of

the public was attracted. Gradually, one lost sight of the fact that

they were men of flesh and blood like ourselves; one began to think

of bundles of all sorts, falling and knocking against each other.

Then the vision assumed a more definite aspect. The forms grew

rounder, the bodies rolled together and seemed to pick themselves up

like balls. Then at last appeared the image towards which the whole

of this scene had doubtless been unconsciously evolving—large

rubber balls hurled against one another in every direction. The

second scene, though even coarser than the first, was no less

instructive. There came on the stage two men, each with an enormous

head, bald as a billiard ball. In their hands they carried large

sticks which each, in turn, brought down on to the other’s cranium.

Here, again, a certain gradation was observable. After each blow,

the bodies seemed to grow heavier and more unyielding, overpowered

by an increasing degree of rigidity. Then came the return blow, in

each case heavier and more resounding than the last, coming, too,

after a longer interval. The skulls gave forth a formidable ring

throughout the silent house. At last the two bodies, each quite

rigid and as straight as an arrow, slowly bent over towards each

other, the sticks came crashing down for the last time on to the two

heads with a thud as of enormous mallets falling upon oaken beams,

and the pair lay prone upon the ground. At that instant appeared in

all its vividness the suggestion that the two artists had gradually

driven into the imagination of the spectators: “We are about to

become …we have now become solid wooden dummies.”

 

A kind of dim, vague instinct may enable even an uncultured mind to

get an inkling here of the subtler results of psychological science.

We know that it is possible to call up hallucinatory visions in a

hypnotised subject by simple suggestion. If he be told that a bird

is perched on his hand, he will see the bird and watch it fly away.

The idea suggested, however, is far from being always accepted with

like docility. Not infrequently, the mesmeriser only succeeds in

getting an idea into his subject’s head by slow degrees through a

carefully graduated series of hints. He will then start with objects

really perceived by the subject, and will endeavour to make the

perception of these objects more and more indefinite; then, step by

step, he will bring out of this state of mental chaos the precise

form of the object of which he wishes to create an hallucination.

Something of the kind happens to many people when dropping off to

sleep; they see those coloured, fluid, shapeless masses, which

occupy the field of vision, insensibly solidifying into distinct

objects.

 

Consequently, the gradual passing from the dim and vague to the

clear and distinct is the method of suggestion par excellence. I

fancy it might be found to be at the root of a good many comic

suggestions, especially in the coarser forms of the comic, in which

the transformation of a person into a thing seems to be taking place

before our eyes. But there are other and more subtle methods in use,

among poets, for instance, which perhaps unconsciously lead to the

same end. By a certain arrangement of rhythm, rhyme and assonance,

it is possible to lull the imagination, to rock it to and fro

between like and like with a regular see-saw motion, and thus

prepare it submissively to accept the vision suggested. Listen to

these few lines of Regnard, and see whether something like the

fleeting image of a DOLL does not cross the field of your

imagination:

 

… Plus, il doit a maints particuliers La somme de dix mil une

livre une obole, Pour l’avoir sans relache un an sur sa parole

Habille, voiture, chauffe, chausse, gante, Alimente, rase,

desaltere, porte.

 

[Footnote: Further, he owes to many an honest wight Item-the sum

two thousand pounds, one farthing, For having on his simple word of

honour Sans intermission for an entire year Clothed him, conveyed

him, warmed him, shod him, gloved him, Fed him and shaved him,

quenched his thirst and borne him.]

 

Is not something of the same kind found in the following sally of

Figaro’s (though here an attempt is perhaps made to suggest the

image of an animal rather than that of a thing): “Quel homme est-ce?—C’est un beau, gros, court, jeune vieillard, gris pommele,

ruse, rase, blase, qui guette et furette, et gronde et geint tout a

la fois.” [Footnote: “What sort of man is here?—He is a handsome,

stout, short, youthful old gentleman, iron-grey, an artful knave,

clean shaved, clean ‘used up,’ who spies and pries and growls and

groans all in the same breath.”]

 

Now, between these coarse scenes and these subtle suggestions there

is room for a countless number of amusing effects, for all those

that can be obtained by talking about persons as one would do about

mere things. We will only select one or two instances from the plays

of Labiche, in which they are legion.

 

Just as M. Perrichon is getting into the railway carriage, he makes

certain of not forgetting any of his parcels: “Four, five, six, my

wife seven, my daughter eight, and myself nine.” In another play, a

fond father is boasting of his daughter’s learning in the following

terms: “She will tell you, without faltering, all the kings of

France that have occurred.” This phrase, “that have occurred,”

though not exactly transforming the kings into mere things, likens

them, all the same, to events of an impersonal nature.

 

As regards this latter example, note that it is unnecessary to

complete the identification of the person with the thing in order to

ensure a comic effect. It is sufficient for us to start in this

direction by feigning, for instance, to confuse the person with the

function he exercises. I will only quote a sentence spoken by a

village mayor in one of About’s novels: “The prefect, who has always

shown us the same kindness, though he has been changed several times

since 1847…”

 

All these witticisms are constructed on the same model. We might

make up any number of them, when once we are in possession of the

recipe. But the art of the story-teller or the playwright does not

merely consist in concocting jokes. The difficulty lies in giving to

a joke its power of suggestion, i.e. in making it acceptable. And we

only do accept it either because it seems to be the natural product

of a particular state of mind or because it is in keeping with the

circumstances of the case. For instance, we are aware that M.

Perrichon is greatly excited on the occasion of his first railway

journey. The expression “to occur” is one that must have cropped up

a good many times in the lessons repeated by the girl before her

father; it makes us think of such a repetition. Lastly, admiration

of the governmental machine might, at a pinch, be extended to the

point of making us believe that no change takes place in the prefect

when he changes his name, and that the function gets carried on

independently of the functionary.

 

We have now reached a point very far from the original cause of

laughter. Many a comic form, that cannot be explained by itself, can

indeed only be understood from its resemblance to another, which

only makes us laugh by reason of its relationship with a third, and

so on indefinitely, so that psychological analysis, however luminous

and searching, will go astray unless it holds the thread along which

the comic impression has travelled from one end of the series to the

other. Where does this progressive continuity come from? What can be

the driving force, the strange impulse which causes the comic to

glide thus from image to image, farther and farther away from the

starting-point, until it is broken up and lost in infinitely remote

analogies? But what is that force which divides and subdivides the

branches of a tree into smaller boughs and its roots into radicles?

An inexorable law dooms every living energy, during the brief

interval allotted to it in time, to cover the widest possible extent

in space. Now, comic fancy is indeed a living energy, a strange

plant that has nourished on the stony portions of the social soil,

until such time as culture should allow it to vie with the most

refined products of art. True, we are far from great art in the

examples of the comic we have just been reviewing. But we shall draw

nearer to it, though without attaining to it completely, in the

following chapter. Below art, we find artifice, and it is this zone

of artifice, midway between nature