Whilst in school the enfant terrible of French poetry Arthur Rimbaud wrote ‘in the tentative smile there always shines a tear’. Rimbaud went to Paris and laughed in the faces of the established poets (describing their work as merde), made the poet Verlaine fall in love with him and leave his wife (Verlain eventually shot Rimbaud as he was scared he would leave him) and then, at twenty-one having changed the shape of poetry, retired, disowning his past of poetry and homosexuality, to, incompetently, smuggle guns and become a businessman.
There are many scientific, psychological and philosophical studies that show the minute distance between laughing and crying and many songs about the transition from one to the other such as the Big Joe Turner’s song, After my Laughter Came Tears
The German philosopher (you’ve guessed it) Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps, understood this better than most, ‘Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.’ And ‘We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.’, he knew that the world was absurd and both the good and bad should be accompanied by a laugh.
There seems to be a startling correlation between depression and humour. In his autobiography the 1960s comedian Lenny Bruce states (I read it many years ago so apologies for any mistakes) ‘when I was a child my mother bought me a book. I read it everywhere, even at the breakfast table ‘don’t read at the table’ ‘then why do cereal boxes have writing on? ‘don’t read at the table’. I thought when I grow up I’ll read whatever I want, wherever I want, even on the metro ‘excuse me sir, what are you reading?’ a cereal box.’
Lenny Bruce, desperate for his wife not to have to continue as a stripper (they met at a strip club he was performing in) got in a lot trouble with the police with his ‘get rich schemes’. The problems with his personal life were compounded by his continual arrests on the charge of obscenity from his stage performances- his shows were to educate people about how language is abused and the natural bodily processes are reviled in society- leading to him becoming more dependant on self-medication, he was eventually found dead naked with a burnt bottle cap and syringe.
Lenny Bruce is not the only comedian to have problems with mental illness. Tony Hancock is another example.
However, as life is absurd it always must have a chuckle on its tongue. Great works on the human condition contain the notion that there must be some kind of humour- Dante’s Divine Comedy and the works of Balzac, which he saw as one piece ‘the human comedy’ (also the name given to a book by William Saroyan in which the lead character, brilliantly in my opinion, lives at the address 2226).
Utterances that can be utterly bleak also can have great humour in them, usually because they are true: ‘the meaning of life is that it ends’ (Kafka), ‘reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one’ (Einstein) ‘I’ll never get out of this world alive’ (Hank Williams).
Taking a contrary position, the French philosopher Henri Bergson said that humour came from the objectification of people- Charles De Galle becoming an exaggerated nose (the writer Gogol felt his identity was so connected to his own nose that he wrote a story about it coming to life and leading his life for him- but better- hilarious) and so forth. Related by marriage to the great Marcel Proust, Bergson remembers him as ‘the cousin that gave me some nice cufflinks’.
Great humour can be found in the absurdity of daily life. The English comedian Mr Monty Python used to sell second hand cars until he realised that a hand cannot drive a car without a body… the comedian group Monty Python mocked the absurd nature of English culture. Their humour was deceptive as it always had dark undertones, however the members were, generally, well adjusted people without the problems of other comedians. And there can be great benefit in making people laugh. Douglas Adams’ flat mate remembers when Mr Adams (author of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy) went out to by a can of coke and returned with a whole crate as he realised that now he was rich he didn’t have to live a can-to-mouth existence.
Einstein is known by many people to be a merry ol’ soul but if one reads his papers one will see that he struggled terribly with injustice in the world, especially his part in it by working on the creation of the atomic bomb. Also his private life was, in many instances, tragic yet the public perception of him is an indication that great humility, tenderness and humour comes from a deep place (people like Plato, Dostoyevsky and Leonard Cohen, people who have documented problems with depression, can have me literally falling off chairs and, walking down the street remembering a quote, laughing loudly to the bemusement of those around)
Humour can be used to lessen tense situations and it is said that when you cannot find even a trace of humour in something then you are really in trouble. Laughter is also a good psychological indication of a person, to quote a rather long passage from Dusty
…A great many people don’t know how to laugh at all. However, there’s nothing to know here: it’s a gift, and it can’t be fabricated….A man can give himself away completely by his laughter, so that you suddenly learn all of his innermost secrets. … intelligent laughter is sometimes repulsive (as) laughter calls first of all for sincerity…lack of spite…sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth…only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and good-heartedly…if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how he weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs…note at the same time all the nuances: for instance, a man’s laughter must in no case seem stupid to you…The moment you notice the slightest trace of stupidity in someone’s laughter, it undoubtedly means that the man is of limited intelligence… or if his laughter isn’t stupid, but the man himself, when he laughs, for some reason suddenly seems ridiculous to you… then…the man has no real sense of dignity…or if his laughter is infectious, but for some reason still seems banal…then, that the man’s nature is on the banal side as well, and all the noble and lofty that you noticed in him before is either deliberately affected or unconsciously borrowed, and later…is certain to change for the worse…
You can’t get anything past Dusty!
Well, before I leave you, as Hermann Hesse said ‘In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke’, I’ll share with you my favourite joke that I have made up
A mathematician opens a bakery and a man goes in but then returns later to return the item. The mathematician asks what the problem is
‘I used to correct ingredients at the right ratios’
To which the man replies
‘It is supposed to be round but your Pie R Squared!’
‘till next time!
thegreaterfool2016 