Authors: Arthur Koestler

The Act of Creation (3 page)

BOOK: The Act of Creation

6.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Furthermore, the same muscle contractions produce different effects
according to whether they expose a set of pearly teeth or a toothless
gap -- producing a smile, a simper, or smirk. Mood also superimposes
its own facial pattern -- hence gay laughter, melancholy smile,
lascivious grin. Lastly, contrived laughter and smiling can
be used as a conventional signal-language to convey pleasure or
embarrassment, friendliness or derision. We are concerned, however,
only with spontaneous laughter as a specific response to the comic;
regarding which we can conclude with Dr. Johnson that 'men have
been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed in
the same way.'
The Paradox of Laughter
I have taken pains to show that laughter is, in the sense indicated
above, a true reflex, because here a paradox arises which is the starting
point of our inquiry. Motor reflexes, usually exemplified in textbooks
by knee-jerk or pupillary contraction, are relatively simple, direct
responses to equally simple stimuli which, under normal circumstances,
function autonomously, without requiring the intervention of higher
mental processes; by enabling the organism to counter disturbances
of a frequently met type with standardized reactions, they represent
eminently practical arrangements in the service of survival. But what
is the survival value of the involuntary, simultaneous contraction of
fifteen facial muscles associated with certain noises which are often
irrepressible? Laughter is a reflex, but unique in that it serves no
apparent biological purpose; one might call it a luxury reflex. Its only
utilitarian function, as far as one can see, is to provide temporary
relief from utilitarian pressures. On the evolutionary level where
laughter arises, an element of frivolity seems to creep into a humourless
universe governed by the laws of thcrmodynamics and the survival of
the fittest.
The paradox can be put in a different way. It strikes us as a reasonable
arrangement that a sharp light shone into the eye makes the pupil contract,
or that a pin stuck into one's foot causes its instant withdrawal --
because both the 'stimulus' and the 'response' are on the same physiological
level. But that a complicated mental activity like the reading of a page
by Thurber should cause a specific motor response on the reflex level
is a lopsided phenomenon which has puzzled philosophers since antiquity.
There are, of course, other complex intellectual and emotional activities
which also provoke bodily reactions -- frowning, yawning, sweating,
shivering, what have you. But the effects on the nervous system of reading
a Shakespeare sonnet, working on a mathematical problem, or listening
to Mozart are diffuse and indefinable. There is no clear-cut predictable
response to tell me whether a picture in the art gallery strikes another
visitor as 'beautiful'; but there is a predictable facial contraction
which tells me whether a caricature strikes him as 'comic.'
Humour is the only domain of creative activity where a stimulus on a
high level of complexity produces a massive and sharply defined response
on the level of physiological reflexes.
This paradox enables us to use
the response as an indicator for the presence of that elusive quality,
the comic, which we are seeking to define -- as the tell-tale clicking
of the geiger-counter indicates the presence of radioactivity. And
since the comic is related to other, more exalted, forms of creativity,
the backdoor approach promises to yield some positive results. We all
know that there is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous;
the more surprising that Psychology has not considered the possible
gains which could result from the reversal of that step.
The bibliography of Greig's
Psychology of Laughter and Comedy
, published
in 1923, mentioned three hundred and sixty-three titles of works bearing
partly or entirely on the subject -- from Plato and Aristotle to Kant,
Bergson, and Freud. At the turn of the century T. A. Ribot summed up these
attempts at formulating a theory of the comic: 'Laughter manifests itself
in such varied and heterogeneous conditions . . . that the reduction of
all these causes to a single one remains a very problematical undertaking.
After so much work spent on such a trivial phenomenon, the problem is
still far from being completely explained.' [3] This was written in 1896;
since then only two new theories of importance have been added to the
list: Bergson's
Le Rire
and Freud's
Wit and its Relations to the
Unconscious
. I shall have occasion to refer to them.*
The difficulty lies evidently in the enormous range of laughter-producing
situations -- from physical tickling to mental titillation of the most
varied kinds. I shall try to show that there is unity in this variety;
that the common denominator is of a specific and specifiable pattern
which is of central importance not only in humour but in all domains
of creative activity. The bacillus of laughter is a bug difficult to
isolate; once brought under the microscope, it will turn out to be a
yeast-like, universal ferment, equally useful in making wine or vinegar,
and raising bread.
The Logic of Laughter: A First Approach
Some of the stories that follow, including the first, I owe to my late
friend John von Neumann, who had all the makings of a humorist: he was
a mathematical genius and he came from Budapest.
Two women meet while shopping at the supermarket in the Bronx. One
looks cheerful, the other depressed. The cheerful one inquires:

'What's eating you?'
'Nothing's eating me.'
'Death in the family?'
'No, God forbid!'
'Worried about money?'
'No . . . nothing like that.'
'Trouble with the kids?'
'Well if you must know, it's my little Jimmy.'
'What's wrong with him, then?'
'Nothing is wrong. His teacher said he must see a psychiatrist.'
Pause. 'Well, well, what's wrong with seeing a psychiatrist?'
'Nothing is wrong. The psychiatrist said he's got an Oedipus complex.'
Pause. 'Well, well, Oedipus or Shmoedipus, I wouldn't worry so long as
he's a good boy and loves his mamma.'

The next one is quoted in Freud's essay on the comic.
Chamfort tells a story of a Marquis at the court of Louis XIV who, on
entering his wife's boudoir and finding her in the arms of a Bishop,
walked calmly to the window and went through the motions of blessing
the people in the street.

'What are you doing?' cried the anguished wife.
'Monseigneur is performing my functions,' replied the Marquis,
'so I am performing his.'

Both stories, though apparently quite different and in their origin
more than a century apart, follow in fact the same pattern. The Chamfort
anecdote concerns adultery; let us compare it with a tragic treatment of
that subject -- say, in the Moor of Venice. In the tragedy the tension
increases until the climax is reached: Othello strangles Desdemona;
then it ebbs away in a gradual catharsis, as (to quote Aristotle)
'honor and pity accomplish the purgation of the emotions' (see
Fig. 1,a
on next page).
In the Chamfort anecdote, too, the tension mounts as the story progresses,
but it never reaches its expected climax. The ascending curve is brought
to an abrupt end by the Marquis' unexpected reaction, which debunks our
dramatic expectations; it comes like a bolt out of the blue, which, so to
speak, decapitates the logical development of the situation. The narrative
acted as a channel directing the flow of emotion; when the channel is
punctured the emotion gushes out like a liquid through a burst pipe;
the tension is suddenly relieved and exploded in laughter (Fig. 1,b):

I said that this effect was brought about by the Marquis' unexpected
reaction. However, unexpectedness alone is not enough to produce a comic
effect. The crucial point about the Marquis' behaviour is that it is both
unexpected and perfectly logical -- but of a logic not usually applied
to this type of situation. It is the logic of the division of labour,
the quid pro quo, the give and take; but our expectation was that the
Marquis' actions would be governed by a different logic or code of
behaviour. It is the clash of the two mutually incompatible codes,
or associative contexts, which explodes the tension.
In the Oedipus story we find a similar dash. The cheerful woman's
statement is ruled by the logic of common sense: if Jimmy is a good
boy and loves his mamma there can't be much wrong. But in the context
of Freudian psychiatry the relationship to the mother carries entirely
different associations.
The pattern underlying both stories is
the perceiving of a situation
or idea, L, in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of
reference, M1 and M2
(Fig. 2). The event L, in which the two intersect,
is made to vibrate simultaneously on two different wavelengths, as it
were. While this unusual situation lasts, L is not merely linked to one
associative context, but bisociated with two.

I have coined the term 'bisociation' in order to make a distinction
between the routine skills of thinking on a single 'plane', as it were,
and the creative act, which, as I shall try to show, always operates on
more than one plane. The former may be called single-minded, the latter
a double-minded, transitory state of unstable equilibrium where the
balance of both emotion and thought is disturbed. The forms which this
creative instability takes in science and art will be discussed later;
first we must test the validity of these generalizations in other fields
of the comic.
At the time when John Wilkes was the hero of the poor and lonely,
an ill-wisher informed him gleefully: 'It seems that some of your
faithful supporters have turned their coats.' 'Impossible,' Wilkes
answered. 'Not one of them has a coat to turn.'
In the happy days of
La Ronde
, a dashing but penniless young
Austrian officer tried to obtain the favours of a fashionable
courtesan To shake off this unwanted suitor, she explained to
him that her heart was, alas, no longer free. He replied politely:
'Mademoiselle, I never aimed as high as that.'
'High' is bisociated with a metaphorical and with a topographical context.
The coat is turned first metaphorically, then literally. In both stories
the literal context evokes visual images which sharpen the clash.
A convict was playing cards with his gaolers. On discovering that
he cheated they kicked him out of gaol.
This venerable chestnut was first quoted by Schopenhaner and has since
been roasted over and again in the literature of the comic. It can be
analysed in a single sentence: two conventional rules ('offenders are
punished by being locked up' and 'cheats are punished by being kicked
out'), each of them self-consistent, collide in a given situation -- as
the ethics of the quid pro quo and of matrimony collide in the Chamfort
story. But let us note that the conflicting rules were merely
implied
in the text; by making them explicit I have destroyed the story's
comic effect.
Shortly after the end of the war a memorable statement appeared in a
fashion article in the magazine
Vogue
:

Belsen and Buchenwald have put a stop to the too-thin woman age,
to the cult of undernourishment. [4]

It makes one shudder, yet it is funny in a ghastly way, foreshadowing the
'sick jokes' of a later decade. The idea of starvation is bisociated
with one tragic, and another, utterly trivial context. The following
quotation from
Time
magazine [5] strikes a related chord:

Across the first page of the Christmas issue of the Catholic Universe
Bulletin, Cleveland's official Catholic diocesan newspaper, ran
this eight-column banner head:
It's a boy in Bethlehem.
Congratulations God -- congratulations Mary -- congratulations
Joseph.

Here the frames of reference are the sacred and the vulgarly profane. A
technically nearer version -- if we have to dwell on blasphemy -- is