People express affects caused by impressions of the external world in various ways. When we are frightened, we shudder, we turn pale and start to shiver for fear; when we are embarrassed, we blush, or lower our eyes; when surprised, on the contrary, we open our eyes wide and throw up our hands. We cry with grief, yet we also cry when we are moved by impressions of the world. But why does a human laugh? Because of what is funny. There are certainly other reasons, but this is the most common and natural one. But the assertion that ‘it’s the laughable that makes humans laugh’ is a tautology that explains nothing. Some more detailed explanations are required. Before attempting to give and substantiate some of my own, I will focus on two or three exemplary cases and make some preliminary observations while being as accurate as possible.
Let us consider the following example: an orator is speaking. It makes no difference to us whether he is a professor delivering a lecture, or a public figure speaking at a meeting, or a teacher explaining a lesson, or somebody else. The person is speaking animatedly, gesticulating and trying to be convincing. Suddenly a fly alights on his nose. He drives it away, but the fly is persistent. He drives it away again. The third time, he finally catches it, examines it for a fraction of a second, and then throws it aside. The speech’s effect will be destroyed at this moment, as the listeners burst out laughing. Another example can be found in Gogol’s ‘The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Niki-forovich,’ when Ivan Nikiforovich comes to court to bring a suit against Ivan Ivanovich but gets stuck in the door because he is very stout; he can move neither forward nor backward. One of the clerks braces his knee against the visitor’s stomach and pushes him back. Then the other half of the door is opened and Ivan Nikiforovich enters. A final example: Let us imagine a circus. A clown appears, dressed like an average person, wearing ordinary but badly fitting trousers, a jacket, a hat, and boots that are too big for him, with the broad smile on his face of a person pleased with himself. He is carrying something strange on his shoulder, which on closer examination turns out to be a garden wicket. He carefully puts this wicket on the ground in the middle of the ring, wipes his feet cleanly, then opens it, passes through it, and cautiously closes it again. Having done all this, he loads the wicket on his shoulder and leaves. The public laughs and applauds vigorously for a long time.
What has happened, and what do these three examples have in common? In the first case, those who are gathered initially listen to the orator attentively, but when the fly appears, the listeners’ attention dissipates, or rather deviates. They are no longer listening to the orator, but looking at him. Their attention has shifted from an intellectual phenomenon to a physical one. In the listeners’ perception of the content of the speech, a certain intellectual aspect is overshadowed by what the orator is doing to the fly, that is, by a physical phenomenon replacing it. This replacement or overshadowing, which occurs unexpectedly, is imperceptibly prepared. A certain shift or a sudden external manifestation of this imperceptible process takes place in the consciousness of the audience. In this example, the listeners have already been prepared by some barely perceptible things or details that predispose them to laughter, but that are not strong enough to set it off. The orator gesticulates wildly, which is already funny because it shows that he is trying to convince his listeners not so much by force of argument as by force of his own convictions. The episode with the fly sets off the outburst that was being prepared.
Nonetheless, this sudden overshadowing or replacement is not the only prerequisite to laughter. The orator’s speech was not serious, or forceful, or rich in content, or profound enough to carry the listeners. Otherwise they would not have laughed so soundly or would only have smiled, sympathizing with the renowned scientist or the popular public figure and forgiving him for this slight failure. In this example, failure is not forgiven. The episode with the fly has revealed some hidden flaw in the orator’s actions or in his character. This case can be generalized, and the following can be posited: laughter occurs when the intellectual aspect replacing the physical unexpectedly reveals some hitherto hidden flaw. This is a ridiculing type of laughter. That the orator has allowed some worthless fly to interrupt the flight of his thoughts and feelings has revealed not only flaws in his speech, but also flaws in his character.
Though Gogol’s story is a different case, it is essentially similar to the previous example. Ivan Nikiforovich wants to pass through the door, but his own fat body hinders him and his will is vanquished by purely external circumstances. When it turns out that external circumstances are stronger than a person’s aspiration, the spectator or the reader will laugh. At this moment he or she sees only Ivan Nikiforovich’s body; everything else is forgotten. Whereas in the first case intellectual aspirations were dashed, in the second it was those of the will. In Gogol’s story, laughter occurs because Ivan Nikiforovich is stuck in the door, but it was also prepared by the very development of the plot and is an integral part of it. Ivan Nikiforovich goes to court not to disclose some tragic crime that should be punished but with a false and slanderous ‘petition’ against his former friend that exposes the pettiness and meanness of his motives. And it is not by chance that he is massive: he is fat because he is lazy and gluttonous. Laughter explodes at the moment when the author reveals to the reader the man’s physical nature instead of the person as a whole.
In the first example, the orator’s dashed aspirations are to a certain extent sublime. In Gogol’s story, Nikiforovich’s aspirations are low, and this determines the satirical nature of the Gogol’s intent. In the third case, it looks as though we are dealing with a person’s aspiration that actually succeeds, since the clown passes through the wicket freely. What, then, is comic? Though passing through a wicket does not require any special intellectual effort or will, it is a meaningful and necessary act in real life. In order to enter a garden or a courtyard one must pass through a wicket, but in this act the clowning, which is reasonable in itself, becomes meaningless. Everything that is possible in real life is present: wiping one’s feet, cautiously opening the wicket, passing through it, and equally cautiously closing it, but the most important thing is missing. There is no wicket that serves as a real entrance or passageway, only its external appearance, only the form. There is no fence that the wicket would enable someone to pass through. Emptiness is hidden behind the material manifestation of life.
My analysis will now be limited to these specific cases that belong to a different series of data; and they all obey the same rule since something common can be found in each of them. It has so far been established that laughter in these three examples was caused by the sudden detection of some hidden, previously imperceptible flaw. We came to the conclusion that punishment for a human flaw that was hidden and then suddenly revealed triggered the laughter. In all three cases these flaws were shown in the same way: through a natural or deliberately caused shift of our attention from inner actions to external forms of their manifestation that revealed these flaws and immediately made them evident to everyone. All of this has been expressed so far by way of supposition, as a hypothesis that can be proved or be subjected to specifications and additions. This hypothesis emerged as a conclusion after a wide spectrum of data was examined, but to clarify the constructed nature of the analysis it was expedient to place the conclusions at the beginning. A very preliminary and also hypothetical finding must now be introduced: laughter is not caused by just any flaw, but only by minor ones. In no case can vices be the subject of comedy; they are the subject matter of some forms of tragedy; for example, Pushkin’s Boris Godunov or Shakespeare’s Richard III. Aristotle (1984)1 already made this observation, and other thinkers have expressed these ideas as well. Hartmann (1958, 610) states that the ‘comic rests upon human weaknesses and trivial details.’
These initial ideas and observations will help us understand the vast and varied materials related to the study of laughter and the comic and will allow us to discover the patterns inherent in them.