Laughter | Page 9

adjustment: a cut-and-dried agreement among the persons will not
satisfy it, it insists on a constant striving after reciprocal adaptation.
Society will therefore be suspicious of all INELASTICITY of character,

of mind and even of body, because it is the possible sign of a
slumbering activity as well as of an activity with separatist tendencies,
that inclines to swerve from the common centre round which society
gravitates: in short, because it is the sign of an eccentricity. And yet,
society cannot intervene at this stage by material repression, since it is
not affected in a material fashion. It is confronted with something that
makes it uneasy, but only as a symptom--scarcely a threat, at the very
most a gesture. A gesture, therefore, will be its reply. Laughter must be
something of this kind, a sort of SOCIAL GESTURE. By the fear
which it inspires, it restrains eccentricity, keeps constantly awake and
in mutual contact certain activities of a secondary order which might
retire into their shell and go to sleep, and, in short, softens down
whatever the surface of the social body may retain of mechanical
inelasticity. Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics
alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular
instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement. And yet
there is something esthetic about it, since the comic comes into being
just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of
self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art. In a word,
if a circle be drawn round those actions and dispositions--implied in
individual or social life--to which their natural consequences bring their
own penalties, there remains outside this sphere of emotion and
struggle--and within a neutral zone in which man simply exposes
himself to man's curiosity--a certain rigidity of body, mind and
character, that society would still like to get rid of in order to obtain
from its members the greatest possible degree of elasticity and
sociability. This rigidity is the comic, and laughter is its corrective.
Still, we must not accept this formula as a definition of the comic. It is
suitable only for cases that are elementary, theoretical and perfect, in
which the comic is free from all adulteration. Nor do we offer it, either,
as an explanation. We prefer to make it, if you will, the leitmotiv which
is to accompany all our explanations. We must ever keep it in mind,
though without dwelling on it too much, somewhat as a skilful fencer
must think of the discontinuous movements of the lesson whilst his
body is given up to the continuity of the fencing-match. We will now
endeavour to reconstruct the sequence of comic forms, taking up again

the thread that leads from the horseplay of a clown up to the most
refined effects of comedy, following this thread in its often unforeseen
windings, halting at intervals to look around, and finally getting back, if
possible, to the point at which the thread is dangling and where we
shall perhaps find--since the comic oscillates between life and art--the
general relation that art bears to life.
III
Let us begin at the simplest point. What is a comic physiognomy?
Where does a ridiculous expression of the face come from? And what
is, in this case, the distinction between the comic and the ugly? Thus
stated, the question could scarcely be answered in any other than an
arbitrary fashion. Simple though it may appear, it is, even now, too
subtle to allow of a direct attack. We should have to begin with a
definition of ugliness, and then discover what addition the comic makes
to it; now, ugliness is not much easier to analyse than is beauty.
However, we will employ an artifice which will often stand us in good
stead. We will exaggerate the problem, so to speak, by magnifying the
effect to the point of making the cause visible. Suppose, then, we
intensify ugliness to the point of deformity, and study the transition
from the deformed to the ridiculous.
Now, certain deformities undoubtedly possess over others the sorry
privilege of causing some persons to laugh; some hunchbacks, for
instance, will excite laughter. Without at this point entering into useless
details, we will simply ask the reader to think of a number of
deformities, and then to divide them into two groups: on the one hand,
those which nature has directed towards the ridiculous; and on the other,
those which absolutely diverge from it. No doubt he will hit upon the
following law: A deformity that may become comic is a deformity that
a normally built person, could successfully imitate.
Is it not, then, the case that the hunchback suggests the appearance of a
person who holds himself badly? His back seems to have contracted an
ugly stoop. By