result of a comparison. But this is followed by a continuation of the
comparison with a regular play on words (“necessity”) and a second,
still more unusual combination (“the pants of good-breeding”), which is
possibly witty in itself; for the pants become witty, as it were,
because they are the pants of good-breeding. Therefore it may not take
us by surprise if we get the impression of a very witty comparison; we
are beginning to notice that we show a general tendency in our
estimation to extend a quality to the whole thing when it clings only to
one part of it. Besides, the “pants of good-breeding” remind us of a
similar confusing verse of Heine.
“_Until, at last, the buttons tore from the pants of my patience._”
It is obvious that both of the last comparisons possess a character
which one cannot find in all good, i.e., fitting, comparisons. One might
say that they are in a large manner “debasing,” for they place a thing
of high category, an abstraction (good-breeding, patience), side by side
with a thing of a very concrete nature of a very low kind (pants).
Whether this peculiarity has something to do with wit we shall have to
consider in another connection. Let us attempt to analyze another
example in which the degrading character is exceptionally well defined.
In Nestroy’s farce “_Einen Jux will er sich machen_,” the clerk,
Weinberl, who resolves in his imagination how he will ponder over his
youth when he has some day become a well-established old merchant, says:
“_When in the course of confidential conversation the ice is chopped up
before the warehouse of memory; when the portal of the storehouse of
antiquity is unlocked again; and when the mattings of phantasy are
stocked full with wares of yore._” These are certainly comparisons of
abstractions with very common, concrete things, but the witticism
depends—exclusively or only partially—upon the circumstance that a clerk
makes use of these comparisons which are taken from the sphere of his
daily occupation. But to bring the abstract in relation to the
commonplace with which he is otherwise filled is an act of
_unification_. Let us revert to Lichtenberg’s comparisons.
_Peculiar Attributions_
“_The motives for our actions may be arranged like the thirty-two winds,
and their names may be classified in a similar way, e.g.,
Bread-bread-glory or Glory-glory-bread._”
As so often happens in Lichtenberg’s witticisms, in this case, too, the
impression of appropriateness, cleverness, and ingenuity is so marked
that our judgment of the character of the witty element is thereby
misled. If something witty is intermingled in such an utterance with the
excellent sense, we probably are deluded into declaring the whole to be
an exceptional joke. Moreover, I dare say that everything that is really
witty about it results from the strangeness of the peculiar combination
bread-bread-glory. Thus as far as wit is concerned it is representation
through absurdity.
The peculiar combination or absurd attribution can alone be represented
as a product of a comparison.
Lichtenberg says: “_A twice-sleepy woman—a once-sleepy church pew_.”
Behind each one there is a comparison with a bed; in both cases there is
besides the comparison also the technical factor of _allusion_. Once it
is an allusion to the soporific effect of sermons, and the second time
to the inexhaustible theme of sex.
Having found hitherto that a comparison as often as it appears witty
owes this impression to its connection with one of the techniques of wit
known to us, there are nevertheless some other examples which seem to
point to the fact that a comparison as such can also be witty.
This is Lichtenberg’s characteristic remark about certain odes. “They
are in poetry what Jacob Böhm’s immortal writings are in prose—_they are
a kind of picnic in which the author supplies the words, and the readers
the meaning_.”
“When he _philosophizes_, he generally sheds _an agreeable moonlight_
over his topics, which is in the main quite pleasant, but which does not
show any one subject clearly.”
Again, Heine’s description: “_Her face resembled a kodex palimpsestus,
where under the new block-lettered text of a church father peek forth
the half-obliterated verses of an ancient Hellenic erotic poet._”
Or, the continued comparison of a very degrading tendency, in the “Bäder
von Lucca.”
“_The Catholic priest_ is more like a clerk who is employed in a big
business; the church, the big house at the head of which is the Pope,
gives him a definite salary. He works lazily like one who is not working
on his own account, he has many colleagues, and so easily remains
unnoticed in the big business enterprise. He is concerned only in the
credit of the house and still more in its preservation, since he would
be deprived of his means of sustenance in case it went bankrupt. _The
Protestant clergyman_, on the other hand, is his own boss, and carries
on the religious businesses on his own account. He has no wholesale
trade like his Catholic brother-tradesman, but deals merely at retail;
and since he himself must understand it, he cannot be lazy. He must
praise his _articles of faith_ to the people and must disparage the
articles of his competitors. Like a true small trader he stands in his
retail store, full of envy of the industry of all large houses,
particularly the large house in Rome which has so many thousand
bookkeepers and packers on its payroll, and which owns factories in all
four corners of the world.”
In the face of this, as in many other examples, we can no longer dispute
the fact that a comparison may in itself be witty, and that the witty
impression need not necessarily depend on one of the known techniques of
wit. But we are entirely in the dark as to what determines the witty
character of the comparison, since it certainly does not cling to the
similarity as a form of expression of the thought, or to the operation
of the comparison. We can do nothing but include comparison with the
different forms of “indirect representation” which are at the disposal
of the technique of wit, and the problem, which confronted us more
distinctly in the mechanism of comparison than in the means of wit
hitherto treated, must remain unsolved. There must surely be a special
reason why the decision whether something is a witticism or not presents
more difficulties in cases of comparison than in other forms of
expression.
This gap in our understanding, however, offers no ground for complaint
that our first investigation has been unsuccessful. Considering the
intimate connection which we had to be prepared to ascribe to the
different types of wit, it would have been imprudent to expect that we
could fully explain this aspect of the problem before we had cast a
glance over the others. We shall have to take up this problem at another
place.
_Review of the Techniques of Wit_
Are we sure that none of the possible techniques of wit has escaped our
investigation? Not exactly; but by a continued examination of new
material, we can convince ourselves that we have become acquainted with
the most numerous and most important technical means of wit-work—at
least with as much as is necessary for formulating a judgment about the
nature of this psychic process. At present no such judgment exists; on
the other hand, we have come into possession of important indications,
from the direction of which we may expect a further explanation of the
problem. The interesting processes of condensation with substitutive
formation, which we have recognized as the nucleus of the technique of
word-wit, directed our attention to the dream-formation in whose
mechanism the identical psychic processes were discovered. Thither also
we are directed by the technique of the thought-wit, namely
displacement, faulty thinking, absurdity, indirect expression, and
representation through the opposite—each and all are also found in the
technique of dreams. The dream is indebted to displacement for its
strange appearance, which hinders us from recognizing in it the
continuation of our waking thoughts; the dream’s use of absurdity and
contradiction has cost it the dignity of a psychic product, and has
misled the authors to assume that the determinants of dream-formation
are: collapse of mental activity, cessation of criticism, morality, and
logic. Representation through the opposite is so common in dreams that
even the popular but entirely misleading books on dream interpretation
usually put it to good account. Indirect expression, the substitution
for the dream-thought by an allusion, by a trifle or by a symbolism
analogous to comparison, is just exactly what distinguishes the manner
of expression of the dream from our waking thoughts.[36] Such a
far-reaching agreement as found between the means of wit-work and those
of dream-work can scarcely be accidental. To show those agreements in
detail and to trace their motivations will be one of our future tasks.
III
THE TENDENCIES OF WIT[37]
Near the end of the preceding chapter as I was writing down Heine’s
comparison of the Catholic priest to an employee of a large business
house, and the comparison of the Protestant divine to an independent
retail dealer, I felt an inhibition which nearly prevented me from using
this comparison. I said to myself that among my readers probably there
would be some who hold in veneration not only religion, but also its
administration and administrators. These readers might take offense at
the comparison and get so wrought up about it that it would take away
all interest in the investigation as to whether the comparison seemed
witty in itself or was witty only through its garnishings. In other
examples, e.g., the one mentioned above concerning the agreeable
moonlight shed by a certain philosophy, there would be no worry that for
some readers it might be a disturbing influence in our investigation.
Even the most religious person would remain in the right mood to form a
judgment about our problem.
It is easy to guess the character of the witticism by the kind of
reaction that wit exerts on the hearer. Sometimes wit is wit for its own
sake and serves no other particular purpose; then again, it places
itself at the service of such a purpose, i.e., it becomes purposive.
Only that form of wit which has such a tendency runs the risk of
ruffling people who do not wish to hear it.
Theo. Vischer called wit without a tendency “_abstract_” wit, I prefer
to call it “_harmless_” wit.
As we have already classified wit according to the material touched by
its technique into word- and thought-wit, it is incumbent upon us to
investigate the relation of this classification to the one just put
forward. Word- and thought-wit on the one hand, and abstract- and
tendency-wit on the other hand, bear no relation of dependence to each
other; they are two entirely independent classifications of witty
productions. Perhaps some one may have gotten the impression that
harmless witticisms are preponderately word-witticisms, whereas the
complicated techniques of thought-witticisms are mostly made to serve
strong tendencies. There are harmless witticisms that operate through
play on words and sound similarity, and just as harmless ones which make
use of all means of thought-wit. Nor is it less easy to prove that
tendency-wit as far as technique is concerned may be merely the wit of
words. Thus, for example, witticisms that “_play_” with proper names
often show an insulting and offending tendency, and yet they, too,
belong to word-wit. Again, the most harmless of all jests are
word-witticisms. Examples of this nature are the popular “shake-up”
rhymes (Schüttelreime) in which the technique is represented through the
manifold application of the same material with a very peculiar
modification:
“Having been forsaken by _Dame Luck_, he degenerated into a _Lame
Duck_.”
Let us hope that no one will deny that the pleasure experienced in this
kind of otherwise unpretentious rhyming is of the same nature as the one
by which we recognize wit.
Good examples of abstract or harmless thought-witticisms abound in
Lichtenberg’s comparisons with which we have already become acquainted.
I add a few more. “_They sent a small Octavo to the University of
Göttingen; and received back in body and soul a quarto_” (a fourth-form
boy).
“_In order to erect this budding well, one must lay above all things a
good foundation, and I know of no firmer than by laying immediately over
every pro-layer a contra-layer._”
“_One man begets the thought, the second acts as its godfather, the
third begets children by it, the fourth visits it on its death-bed, and
the fifth buries it_” (comparison with unification).
“_Not only did he disbelieve in ghosts, but he was not ever afraid of
them._” The witticism in this case lies exclusively in the absurd
representation which puts what is usually considered less important in
the comparative and what is considered more important in the positive
degree. If we divest it of its dress it says: it is much easier to use
our reason and make light of the fear of ghosts than to defend ourselves
against this fear when the occasion presents itself. But this rendering
is no longer witty; it is merely a correct and still too little
respected psychological fact suggesting what Lessing expresses in his
well-known words:
“Not all are free who mock their chains.”
_Harmless and Tendency Wit_
I shall take the opportunity presented here of clearing up what may
still lead to a possible misunderstanding. “Harmless” or “abstract” wit
should in no way convey the same meaning as “shallow” or “poor” wit. It
is meant only to designate the opposite of the “tendency” wit to be
described later. As shown in the aforementioned examples, a harmless
jest, i.e., a witticism without a tendency, can also be very rich in
content and express something worth while. The quality of a witticism,
however, is independent of the wit and represents the quality of the
thought which is here expressed wittily by means of a special
contrivance. To be sure, just as watch-makers are wont to enclose very
good works in valuable cases, so it may likewise happen with wit that
the best witty activities are used to invest the richest thoughts.
Now, if we pay strict attention to the distinction between
thought-content and the witty wording of thought-wit, we arrive at an
insight which may clear up much uncertainty in our judgment of wit. For
it turns out—astonishing as it may seem—that our enjoyment of a
witticism is supplied by the combined impression of content and
wit-activity, and that one of the factors is likely to deceive us about
the extent of the other. It is only the reduction of the witticism that
lays bare to us our mistaken judgment.
The same thing applies to word-wit. When we hear that “_experience
consists simply of experiencing what one wishes he had not
experienced_,” we are puzzled, and believe that we have learnt a new
truth; it takes some time before we recognize in this disguise the
platitude, “adversity is the school of wisdom” (K. Fischer). The
excellent wit-activity which seeks to define “experience” by the almost
exclusive use of the word “experience” deceives us so completely that we
overestimate the content of the sentence. The same thing happens in many
similar cases and also in Lichtenberg’s unification-witticism about
January (p. 89), which expresses nothing but what we already know,
namely, that New Year’s wishes are as seldom realized as other wishes.
We find the contrary true of other witticisms, in which obviously what
is striking and correct in the thought captivates us, so that we call
the saying an excellent witticism, whereas it is only the thought that
is brilliant while the wit-activity is often weak. It is especially true
of Lichtenberg’s wit that the path of the thought is often of more value
than its witty expression, though we unjustly extend the value of the
former to the latter. Thus the remark about the “torch of truth” (p.
115) is hardly a witty comparison, but it is so striking that we are
inclined to lay stress on the sentence as exceptionally witty.
Lichtenberg’s witticisms are above all remarkable for their
thought-content and their certainty of hitting the mark. Goethe has
rightly remarked about this author that his witty and jocose thoughts
positively conceal problems. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say
that they touch upon the solutions of problems. When, for example, he
presents as a witty thought:
“He always read _Agamemnon_ instead of the German word _angenommen_, so
thoroughly had he read Homer” (technically this is absurdity plus sound
similarity of words). Thus he discovered nothing less than the secret of
mistakes in reading.[38] The following joke, whose technique (p. 78)
seemed to us quite unsatisfactory, is of a similar nature.
“_He was surprised that there were two holes cut in the pelts of cats
just where the eyes were located._” The stupidity here exhibited is only
seemingly so; in reality this ingenuous remark conceals the great
problem of teleology in the structure of animals; it is not at all so
self-evident that the eyelid cleft opens just where the cornea is
exposed, until the science of evolution explains to us this coincidence.
Let us bear in mind that a witty sentence gave us a general impression
in which we were unable to distinguish the amount of thought-content
from the amount of wit-work; perhaps even a more significant parallel to
it will be found later.
_Pleasure Results from the Technique_
For our theoretical explanation of the nature of wit, harmless wit must
be of greater value to us than tendency-wit and shallow wit more than
profound wit. Harmless and shallow plays on words present to us the
problem of wit in its purest form, because of the good sense therein and
because there is no purposive factor nor underlying philosophy to
confuse the judgment. With such material our understanding can make
further progress.
_At the end of a dinner to which I had been invited, a pastry called
Roulard was served; it was a culinary accomplishment which presupposed a
good deal of skill on the part of the cook. “Is it home-made?” asked one
of the guests. “Oh, yes,” replied the host, “it is a Home-Roulard”_
(Home Rule).
This time we shall not investigate the technique of this witticism, but
shall center our attention upon another, and that one the most important
factor. As I remember, this improvised joke delighted all the guests and
made us laugh. In this case, as in countless others, the feeling of
pleasure of the hearer cannot have originated from any purposive element
nor the thought-content of the wit; so we are forced to connect the
feeling of pleasure with the technique of wit. The technical means of
wit which we have described, such as condensation, displacement,
indirect expression, etc., have therefore the faculty to produce a
feeling of pleasure in the hearer, although we cannot as yet see how
they acquired that faculty. By such easy stages we get the second axiom
for the explanation of wit; the first one (p. 17) states that the
character of wit depends upon the mode of expression. Let us remember
also that the second axiom has really taught us nothing new. It merely
isolates a fact that was already contained in a discovery which we made
before. For we recall that whenever it was possible to reduce the wit by
substituting for its verbal expression another set of words, at the same
time carefully retaining the sense, it not only eliminated the witty
character but also the laughableness (_Lacheffekt_) that constitutes the
pleasure of wit.
At present we cannot go further without first coming to an understanding
with our philosophical authorities.
The philosophers who adjudge wit to be a part of the comic and deal with
the latter itself in the field of æsthetics, characterize the æsthetic
presentation by the following conditions: that we are not thereby
interested in or about the objects, that we do not need these objects to
satisfy our great wants in life, but that we are satisfied with the mere
contemplation of the same, and with the pleasure of the thought itself.
“This pleasure, this mode of conception is purely æsthetical, it depends
entirely on itself, its end is only itself and it fulfills no other end
in life” (K. Fischer, p. 68).
We scarcely venture a contradiction to K. Fischer’s words—perhaps we
merely translate his thoughts into our own mode of expression—when we
insist that the witty activity is, after all, not to be designated as
aimless or purposeless, since it has for its aim the evocation of
pleasure in the hearer. I doubt whether we are able to undertake
anything which has no object in view. When we do not use our psychic
apparatus for the fulfillment of one of our indispensable
gratifications, we let it work for pleasure, and we seek to derive
pleasure from its own activity. I suspect that this is really the
condition which underlies all æsthetic thinking, but I know too little
about æsthetics to be willing to support this theory. About wit,
however, I can assert, on the strength of the two impressions gained
before, that it is an activity whose purpose is to derive pleasure—be it
intellectual or otherwise—from the psychic processes. To be sure, there
are other activities which accomplish the same thing. They may be
differentiated from each by the sphere of psychic activity from which
they wish to derive pleasure, or perhaps by the methods which they use
in accomplishing this. At present we cannot decide this, but we firmly
maintain that at last we have established a connection between the
technique of wit partly controlled by the tendency to economize (p. 53)
and the production of pleasure.
But before we proceed to solve the riddle of how the technical means of
wit-work can produce pleasure in the hearer, we wish to mention that,
for the sake of simplicity and more lucidity, we have altogether put out
of the way all tendency-witticisms. Still we must attempt to explain
what the tendencies of wit are and in what manner wit makes use of these
tendencies.
_Hostile and Obscene Wit_
We are taught above all by an observation not to put aside the
tendency-wit when we are investigating the origin of the pleasure in
wit. The pleasurable effect of harmless wit is usually of a moderate
nature; all that it can be expected to produce in the hearer is a
distinct feeling of satisfaction and a slight ripple of laughter; and as
we have shown by fitting examples (p. 132) at least a part of this
effect is due to the thought-content. The sudden irresistible outburst
of laughter evoked by the tendency-wit rarely follows the wit without a
tendency. As the technique may be identical in both, it is fair to
assume that by virtue of its purpose, the tendency-wit has at its
disposal sources of pleasure to which harmless wit has no access.
It is now easy to survey wit-tendencies. Wherever wit is not a means to
its end, i. e., harmless, it puts itself in the service of but two
tendencies which may themselves be united under one viewpoint; it is
either _hostile_ wit serving as an aggression, satire, or defense, or it
is _obscene_ wit serving as a sexual exhibition. Again it is to be
observed that the technical form of wit—be it a word- or
thought-witticism—bears no relation to these two tendencies.
It is a much more complicated matter to show in what way wit serves
these tendencies. In this investigation I wish to present first not the
hostile but the exhibition wit. The latter has indeed very seldom been
deemed worthy of an investigation, as if an aversion had transferred
itself here from the material to the subject; however, we shall not
allow ourselves to be misled thereby, for we shall soon touch upon a
detail in wit which promises to throw light on more than one obscure
point.