I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light. My nature, one
uninterrupted endeavour, was too tense for that. Although I
occasionally felt the spontaneous enjoyments of breathing the fresh
air, seeing the sun shine, and listening to the whistling of the wind,
and always delighted in the fact that I was in the heyday of my youth,
there was yet a considerable element of melancholy in my temperament,
and I was so loth to abandon myself to any illusion that when I looked
into my own heart and summed up my own life it seemed to me that I had
never been happy for a day. I did not know what it was to be happy for
a whole day at a time, scarcely for an hour. I had only known a
moment's rapture in the companionship of my comrades at a merry-making,
in intercourse with a friend, under the influence of the beauties of
Nature, or the charm of women, or in delight at gaining intellectual
riches--during the reading of a poem, the sight of a play, or when
absorbed in a work of art.
Any feeling that I was enriching my mind from those surrounding me was
unfortunately rare with me. Almost always, when talking to strangers, I
felt the exact opposite, which annoyed me exceedingly, namely, that I
was being intellectually sucked, squeezed like a lemon, and whereas I
was never bored when alone, in the society of other people I suffered
overwhelmingly from boredom. In fact, I was so bored by the visits
heaped upon me by my comrades and acquaintances, who inconsiderately
wasted my time, in order to kill a few hours, that I was almost driven
to despair; I was too young obstinately to refuse to see them.
By degrees, the thought of the boredom that I suffered at almost all
social functions dominated my mind to such an extent that I wrote a
little fairy tale about boredom, by no means bad (but unfortunately
lost), round an idea which I saw several years later treated in another
way in Sibbern's well-known book of the year 2135. This fairy tale was
read aloud to Nutzhorn's band and met with its approval.
But although I could thus by no means be called of a happy disposition,
I was, by reason of my overflowing youth, in a constant state of
elation, which, as soon as the company of others brought me out of my
usual balance, acted like exuberant mirth and made me burst out
laughing.
I was noted, among my comrades, and not always to my advantage, for my
absolutely ungovernable risibility. I had an exceedingly keen eye for
the ridiculous, and easily influenced as I still was, I could not
content myself with a smile. Not infrequently, when walking about the
town, I used to laugh the whole length of a street. There were times
when I was quite incapable of controlling my laughter; I laughed like a
child, and it was incomprehensible to me that people could go so
soberly and solemnly about. If a person stared straight at me, it made
me laugh. If a girl flirted a little with me, I laughed in her face.
One day I went out and saw two drunken labourers, in a cab, each with a
wreath on his knee; I was obliged to laugh; I met an old dandy whom I
knew, with two coats on, one of which hung down below the other; I had
to laugh at that, too. Sometimes, walking or standing, absorbed in
thoughts, I was outwardly abstracted, and answered mechanically, or
spoke in a manner unsuited to my words; if I noticed this myself, I
could not refrain from laughing aloud at my own absent-mindedness. It
occasionally happened that at an evening party, where I had been
introduced by the son of the house to a stiff family to whom I was a
stranger, and where the conversation at table was being carried on in
laboured monosyllables, I would begin to laugh so unrestrainedly that
every one stared at me in anger or amazement. And it occasionally
happened that when some sad event, concerning people present, was being
discussed, the recollection of something comical I had seen or heard
the same day would crop up in my mind to the exclusion of all else, and
I would be overtaken by fits of laughter that were both
incomprehensible and wounding to those round me, but which it was
impossible to me to repress. At funeral ceremonies, I was in such dread
of bursting out laughing that my attention would involuntarily fix
itself on everything it ought to avoid. This habit of mine was
particularly trying when my laughter had a ruffling effect on others in
a thing that I myself was anxious to carry through. Thus I spoilt the
first rehearsals of Sophocles' Greek play _Philoctetes_, which a little
group of students were preparing to act at the request of Julius Lange.
Some of them pronounced the Greek in an unusual manner, others had
forgotten their parts or acted badly--and that was quite enough to set
me off in a fit of laughter which I had difficulty in stopping. Thus I
often laughed, when I was tormented at being compelled to laugh, in
reality feeling melancholy, and mentally worried; I used to think of
Oechlenschläger's Oervarodd, who does not laugh when he is happy, but
breaks into a guffaw when he is deeply affected.
These fits of laughter were in reality the outcome of sheer
youthfulness; with all my musings and reflection, I was still in many
ways a child; I laughed as boys and girls laugh, without being able to
stop, and especially when they ought not. But this painful trait in
myself directed my thoughts to the nature proper of laughter; I tried
to sum up to myself why I laughed, and why people in general laughed,
pondered, as well as I was capable of doing the question of what the
comical consisted of, and then recorded the fruits of my reflections in
my second long treatise, _On Laughter_, which has been lost.
As I approached my twentieth year, these fits of laughter stopped. "I
have," wrote I at the time, "seen into that Realm of Sighs, on the
threshold of which I--like Parmeniscus after consulting the Oracle of
Trophonius--have suddenly forgotten how to laugh."