We will now examine all those things that can never be funny, as this will help to determine what can be comical. Generally speaking, it is easy to see that nature around can never be comical. There are no funny woods, fields, mountains, seas, or funny flowers, herbs, cereals, etc. This was noticed long ago, and can hardly be disputed. Bergson (2005, 2) writes that ‘A landscape may be beautiful, charming and sublime, or insignificant and ugly. It will never be laughable.’ He takes credit for this discovery: ‘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’ (2). But this observation had been made repeatedly in the past, by Chernyshevsky for example almost fifty years before Bergson: ‘There cannot be any place for the comic in inorganic and plant nature’ (1974, IV:187).
It is important to note that Chernyshevsky is speaking not about nature in general but only about inorganic and plant nature – that is, not about the animal kingdom, because animals can be funny. Cherny-shevsky explains this by stating that animals can resemble people. ‘We laugh at animals,’ he notes, ‘because they remind us of man and his movements’ (187). This is undoubtedly correct. The monkey, the funniest of all animals, resembles people the most. Penguins, for example, are extremely funny with their bearing and gait and it was not without reason that Anatole France titled one of his satirical novels Penguin Island. Other animals are funny because they remind us if not of the form then of the expression of human faces. The bulging eyes of a frog, the wrinkled forehead of a puppy, the protruding ears and bared teeth of a bat make us smile. In some animals the resemblance to humans can be strengthened through training. Dancing dogs invariably delight children. The comic in animals is stronger when they wear human clothes – trousers, skirts, or hats. A bear in the woods looking for food is not funny, but if it is taken around villages and shows how boys steal peas or how girls whiten and rouge their faces; this causes laughter. The humour in works such as E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Life and the Opinions of the Tomcat Murr: Together with a Fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper is based on the fact that a writer saw a human in the gestures of an animal. In all of the examples discussed, the likeness between human and animal is immediate and direct. But the idea expressed by Chernyshevsky holds true also in cases where the likeness is remote and indirect. Why are giraffes funny? At first glance, they do not resemble people, but a human can also be lanky and have a long, thin neck. These features remind us remotely of humans, and this is sufficient to awaken our sense of amusement. It is more difficult to tell, for example, why the kitten that is slowly walking towards its target with its tail raised vertically is funny. But here, too, something human is hidden that we are unable to determine immediately.
Chernyshevsky’s statement that the plant kingdom cannot cause laughter, however, needs to be modified. It is true in general, but if we pull out a radish and its outlines suddenly remind us of a little man’s face, the possibility for the comic is already there. But exceptions prove rather than disprove the validity of a theory. A preliminary conclusion can be drawn from what has been said so far: the comic is always directly or indirectly associated with humans, and inorganic nature cannot be funny because it has nothing in common with them. Here the question should be raised: What is the specific difference between inorganic nature and the human? A very exact answer can be given: humans differ from inorganic nature because they are endowed with intellectual characteristics that should be interpreted as intelligence, will, and emotions. A purely logical conclusion is reached: what is funny is always somehow connected with the sphere of humanity’s mental life. This may seem dubious at first glance since we often think that humans are funny because of their appearance (a bald head, for instance), but the data actually confirm the contrary.
The observations noted above make it possible to introduce some modifications to the observations just made concerning the comic in animals. In the domain of intellectual life, the comic is only possible in humans. In emotional and volitional life, it is possible in the animal world as well. For example, if a big and powerful dog suddenly flees from a small and brave cat that turns around and faces it, this causes laughter because it reminds us of something that is possible among people as well. Hence, some philosophers’ statements about animals being funny because they react as automatons, are obviously wrong. Such statements simply transfer Bergson’s theory to the animal world.
That the comic is definitely linked to the mental life of humans is being suggested as a preliminary hypothesis. The question arising is this: Can things be funny? At first sight, it may seem that things can in no way be funny. Some thinkers have also mentioned this: Kirchmann believes that some odd actions always underlie the comic; as things cannot act, they cannot be comical. He writes: ‘Since the comic can arise only from funny actions it is obvious that lifeless things can never be funny’ (1868, II:44). According to him, to make a thing funny a person must transform it into a living being through his or her imagination: ‘Lifeless things can become funny only when the imagination gives them life and personality’ (44). It is easy to prove that this is completely untrue. A thing can appear funny when made by someone and if the person who made it has involuntarily reflected some of his or her flaws in it: odd furniture and unusual hats or clothes can cause laughter. This happens because their creators’ taste, which does not coincide with our own, has been stamped on them. Thus, what is funny in things is certainly also connected with some manifestations of a person’s mental activities.
What pertains to things pertains to works of architecture as well. Some theorists deny that architecture can be comical (Zimmermann 1858–65, 28). Common people do not think so. Here is a snippet of conversation overheard near a summer cottage:
‘Where do you live, boy?’
‘There, behind the wood, is a small funny house that I live in.’
The house proved to be low, uncommonly odd in its proportions. An unskilful builder had expressed himself in it. Sobakevich’s house comes to mind here:
It was obvious that during its construction the architect had been in constant conflict with the owner’s taste. The architect was a pedant and wanted symmetry, the owner wanted convenience and, evidently as a result of that, boarded up all the corresponding windows on one side and in their place poked through a small one, probably needed for a dark storeroom. The pediment was also not at all in the centre of the house, however much the architect had struggled, because the owner had ordered a column on one side to be eliminated, so that instead of four columns, as in the original design, there were only three. (Gogol 1997, 92–3)
The observation that only humans, or something resembling them, can be funny, should be completed by another one: only humans can laugh. This was noted by Aristotle in his Treatise on the Human Soul: ‘No animal but man ever laughs.’1 This idea has been repeated more than once. Brandes,2 for example, expressed it very clearly and categorically: ‘Only man laughs and only because of something human’ (1900, 278). I will not give a detailed explanation why only humans can laugh. An animal can amuse itself, rejoice, it can even express its joy rather wildly, but it cannot laugh. In order to laugh, we need to be able to see what is funny; there need to be moral evaluations of actions (the comic of avarice, of cowardice, etc.). Finally, to appreciate a pun or a joke requires a mental operation. Animals are incapable of all this, and any attempts (e.g., of dog fanciers) to prove the opposite are doomed from the start.