Laughter by Henri Bergson (best way to read an ebook txt) 📖

is

in the soul, and that it is only through ideality that we can resume

contact with reality.

 

Dramatic art forms no exception to this law. What drama goes forth

to discover and brings to light, is a deep-seated reality that is

veiled from us, often in our own interests, by the necessities of

life. What is this reality? What are these necessities? Poetry

always expresses inward states. But amongst these states some arise

mainly from contact with our fellow-men. They are the most intense

as well as the most violent. As contrary electricities attract each

other and accumulate between the two plates of the condenser from

which the spark will presently flash, so, by simply bringing people

together, strong attractions and repulsions take place, followed by

an utter loss of balance, in a word, by that electrification of the

soul known as passion. Were man to give way to the impulse of his

natural feelings, were there neither social nor moral law, these

outbursts of violent feeling would be the ordinary rule in life. But

utility demands that these outbursts should be foreseen and averted.

Man must live in society, and consequently submit to rules. And what

interest advises, reason commands: duty calls, and we have to obey

the summons. Under this dual influence has perforce been formed an

outward layer of feelings and ideas which make for permanence, aim

at becoming common to all men, and cover, when they are not strong

enough to extinguish it, the inner fire of individual passions. The

slow progress of mankind in the direction of an increasingly

peaceful social life has gradually consolidated this layer, just as

the life of our planet itself has been one long effort to cover over

with a cool and solid crust the fiery mass of seething metals. But

volcanic eruptions occur. And if the earth were a living being, as

mythology has feigned, most likely when in repose it would take

delight in dreaming of these sudden explosions, whereby it suddenly

resumes possession of its innermost nature. Such is just the kind of

pleasure that is provided for us by drama. Beneath the quiet humdrum

life that reason and society have fashioned for us, it stirs

something within us which luckily does not explode, but which it

makes us feel in its inner tension. It offers nature her revenge

upon society. Sometimes it makes straight for the goal, summoning up

to the surface, from the depths below, passions that produce a

general upheaval. Sometimes it effects a flank movement, as is often

the case in contemporary drama; with a skill that is frequently

sophistical, it shows up the inconsistencies of society; it

exaggerates the shams and shibboleths of the social law; and so

indirectly, by merely dissolving or corroding the outer crust, it

again brings us back to the inner core. But, in both cases, whether

it weakens society or strengthens nature, it has the same end in

view: that of laying bare a secret portion of ourselves,—what might

be called the tragic element in our character.

 

This is indeed the impression we get after seeing a stirring drama.

What has just interested us is not so much what we have been told

about others as the glimpse we have caught of ourselves—a whole

host of ghostly feelings, emotions and events that would fain have

come into real existence, but, fortunately for us, did not. It also

seems as if an appeal had been made within us to certain ancestral

memories belonging to a far-away past—memories so deep-seated and

so foreign to our present life that this latter, for a moment, seems

something unreal and conventional, for which we shall have to serve

a fresh apprenticeship. So it is indeed a deeper reality that drama

draws up from beneath our superficial and utilitarian attainments,

and this art has the same end in view as all the others.

 

Hence it follows that art always aims at what is INDIVIDUAL. What

the artist fixes on his canvas is something he has seen at a certain

spot, on a certain day, at a certain hour, with a colouring that

will never be seen again. What the poet sings of is a certain mood

which was his, and his alone, and which will never return. What the

dramatist unfolds before us is the life-history of a soul, a living

tissue of feelings and events—something, in short, which has once

happened and can never be repeated. We may, indeed, give general

names to these feelings, but they cannot be the same thing in

another soul. They are INDIVIDUALISED. Thereby, and thereby only, do

they belong to art; for generalities, symbols or even types, form

the current coin of our daily perception. How, then, does a

misunderstanding on this point arise?

 

The reason lies in the fact that two very different things have been

mistaken for each other: the generality of things and that of the

opinions we come to regarding them. Because a feeling is generally

recognised as true, it does not follow that it is a general feeling.

Nothing could be more unique than the character of Hamlet. Though he

may resemble other men in some respects, it is clearly not on that

account that he interests us most. But he is universally accepted

and regarded as a living character. In this sense only is he

universally true. The same holds good of all the other products of

art. Each of them is unique, and yet, if it bear the stamp of

genius, it will come to be accepted by everybody. Why will it be

accepted? And if it is unique of its kind, by what sign do we know

it to be genuine? Evidently, by the very effort it forces us to make

against our predispositions in order to see sincerely. Sincerity is

contagious. What the artist has seen we shall probably never see

again, or at least never see in exactly the same way; but if he has

actually seen it, the attempt he has made to lift the veil compels

our imitation. His work is an example which we take as a lesson. And

the efficacy of the lesson is the exact standard of the genuineness

of the work. Consequently, truth bears within itself a power of

conviction, nay, of conversion, which is the sign that enables us to

recognise it. The greater the work and the more profound the dimly

apprehended truth, the longer may the effect be in coming, but, on

the other hand, the more universal will that effect tend to become.

So the universality here lies in the effect produced, and not in the

cause.

 

Altogether different is the object of comedy. Here it is in the work

itself that the generality lies. Comedy depicts characters we have

already come across and shall meet with again. It takes note of

similarities. It aims at placing types before our eyes. It even

creates new types, if necessary. In this respect it forms a contrast

to all the other arts.

 

The very titles of certain classical comedies are significant in

themselves. Le Misanthrope, l’Avare, le Joueur, le Distrait, etc.,

are names of whole classes of people; and even when a character

comedy has a proper noun as its title, this proper noun is speedily

swept away, by the very weight of its contents, into the stream of

common nouns. We say “a Tartuffe,” but we should never say “a

Phedre” or “a Polyeucte.”

 

Above all, a tragic poet will never think of grouping around the

chief character in his play secondary characters to serve as

simplified copies, so to speak, of the former. The hero of a tragedy

represents an individuality unique of its kind. It may be possible

to imitate him, but then we shall be passing, whether consciously or

not, from the tragic to the comic. No one is like him, because he is

like no one. But a remarkable instinct, on the contrary, impels the

comic poet, once he has elaborated his central character, to cause

other characters, displaying the same general traits, to revolve as

satellites round him. Many comedies have either a plural noun or

some collective term as their title. “Les Femmes savantes,” “Les

Precieuses ridicules,” “Le Monde ou l’on s’ennuie,” etc., represent

so many rallying points on the stage adopted by different groups of

characters, all belonging to one identical type. It would be

interesting to analyse this tendency in comedy. Maybe dramatists

have caught a glimpse of a fact recently brought forward by mental

pathology, viz. that cranks of the same kind are drawn, by a secret

attraction, to seek each other’s company. Without precisely coming

within the province of medicine, the comic individual, as we have

shown, is in some way absentminded, and the transition from absentmindedness to crankiness is continuous. But there is also another

reason. If the comic poet’s object is to offer us types, that is to

say, characters capable of self-repetition, how can he set about it

better than by showing us, in each instance, several different

copies of the same model? That is just what the naturalist does in

order to define a species. He enumerates and describes its main

varieties.

 

This essential difference between tragedy and comedy, the former

being concerned with individuals and the latter with classes, is

revealed in yet another way. It appears in the first draft of the

work. From the outset it is manifested by two radically different

methods of observation.

 

Though the assertion may seem paradoxical, a study of other men is

probably not necessary to the tragic poet. We find some of the great

poets have lived a retiring, homely sort of life, without having a

chance of witnessing around them an outburst of the passions they

have so faithfully depicted. But, supposing even they had witnessed

such a spectacle, it is doubtful whether they would have found it of

much use. For what interests us in the work of the poet is the

glimpse we get of certain profound moods or inner struggles. Now,

this glimpse cannot be obtained from without. Our souls are

impenetrable to one another. Certain signs of passion are all that

we ever apperceive externally. These we interpret—though always, by

the way, defectively—only by analogy with what we have ourselves

experienced. So what we experience is the main point, and we cannot

become thoroughly acquainted with anything but our own heart—

supposing we ever get so far. Does this mean that the poet has

experienced what he depicts, that he has gone through the various

situations he makes his characters traverse, and lived the whole of

their inner life? Here, too, the biographies of poets would

contradict such a supposition. How, indeed, could the same man have

been Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and many others? But then

a distinction should perhaps here be made between the personality WE

HAVE and all those we might have had. Our character is the result of

a choice that is continually being renewed. There are points—at all

events there seem to be—all along the way, where we may branch off,

and we perceive many possible directions though we are unable to

take more than one. To retrace one’s steps, and follow to the end

the faintly distinguishable directions, appears to be the essential

element in poetic imagination. Of course, Shakespeare was neither

Macbeth, nor Hamlet, nor Othello; still, he MIGHT HAVE BEEN these

several characters if the circumstances of the case on the one hand,

and the consent of his will on the other, had caused to break out

into explosive action what was nothing more than an inner prompting.

We are strangely mistaken as to the part played by poetic

imagination, if we think it pieces together its heroes out of

fragments filched from right and left, as though it were patching

together a harlequin’s motley. Nothing living would result