HERMANN HESSE AND THE DIALECTICS OF TIME Salvatore C. P. ...

investigation to certain contexts, features, or expressions of humour, while '[o]ther
authors have found it necessary to apologize, somewhat curiously, for the fact that
their books or articles on humor are not funny' (Raskin, 7). 6
As far as the present discussion is concerned, its aim is to analyse the
machinery of humour, focusing on those dialectical aspects that, as mentioned above,
ultimately point to the dualism of ideal and reality; for this reason, developing a
detailed taxonomy of all expressions related to humour (e.g. sarcasm, black humour,
caricature, nonsense, witticism, pun, conundrum) forms no part of the present
discussion. Before going any further, however, there is just one consideration which
needs to be put forward: regardless of their approach, most researchers in the field of
humour have included some reference to Bergson or Freud in their analyses, thereby
highlighting the fundamental contributions of these scholars to the discussion on
humour (see for example Koestler, 32). 7
In what follows, four key features of humour will be considered before
drawing attention to one aspect which, common to most theories and approaches,
will be a point of departure for the discussion in the rest of the chapter. Firstly,
humour can be regarded as a civilized and sophisticated form of aggression
apparent, for example, in ridiculing someone:
Laughter was born out of hostility. If there had been no hostility in man, there
would have been no laughter (and, incidentally, no need for laughter). All the
current types of wit and humor retain evidence of this hostile origin. (Raskin,
'Behind the cackle', Neve suggests, 'lurks the desire, lurks the intention, to hurt. This
is a real possibility, and one authority for it is Darwin' (36). 8
Secondly, both Bergson and Freud lay emphasis on the unsympathetic nature
of humour: 'Indifference is its [humour] natural environment, for laughter has no
6 Grotjahn, for example, is among these authors: 'One more rather saddening denial and warning has to be put in
here: the book is, to my regret, not funny' (vii). Similar considerations can be made for those authors who, like
Nietzsche, are terribly serious in advocating humour as a balsam to the soul.
7 Sigmund Freud's Der Witz undseine Beziehung zum Unbewussten was published in 1905, just six years after
Henri Bergson's Le rire: Essai sur la signification du comique (1899). Freud elaborates further on humour in his
article 'Der Humor' of 1927.
8 Bremmer and Roodenburg strikes a similar chord: 'Laughter can be threatening and, indeed, ethologists have
suggested that laughter originated in an aggressive display of teeth' (2).
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