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

greater foe than emotion' (Bergson, 4). 'Die Lust des [Humors]', Freud points out,
'schien uns aus [...] erspartem Gefuehlsaufwand hervorzugehen' (1905, 219; original
emphasis). 9
A third point is that humour, as sublimated hostility, not only expresses
individual acrimony but can also be, as Bergson suggests, a form of punishment
society inflicts on those who infringe its rules. In short, Bergson identifies laughter as
a social 'corrective':
Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person
against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties
taken with it. 10 (197)
A further observation stems directly from the previous three. Following a
possible line of evolution, human beings must have learnt to distance themselves
from their individuality at some stage and, in the form of affectionate ridicule, direct
their hostility against themselves and laugh; in brief, mankind eventually accessed
the realm of self-irony.
A final point, crucial to the discussion in the remainder of the chapter, is that,
regardless of their background or approach (sociological, linguistic,
psychoanalytical), scholars tend to find similar answers to the questions of what is
hidden in the punch-line of a joke or what kind of psychological dynamics it triggers.
The anthropologist Mary Douglas describes a joke as
a play upon form. It brings into relation disparate elements in such a way that
one accepted pattern is challenged by the appearance of another which in
some way was hidden in the first. (150)
Raskin stresses that 'humor [...] introduces] two different levels of perception at the
same time' (41) and, as a linguist, he puts forward his idea of humour as the
overlapping of two 'scripts' that are opposite to some degree (see 130-31). The
essayist and novelist Arthur Koestler, who brings out an underlying paradox implicit
in the workings of laughter (30-32), proposes his model, mainly expounded in the
9 Freud's article of 1927 restates the same view: 'der humoristische Lustgewinn [geht] aus erspartem
Gefuhlsaufwand hervor' (1927, para. 1 of 14).
10 A typical example is offered by somebody who walks naked on a street, thereby becoming the object of
ridicule of passers-by: this person's transgression of the common sense of decency is punished with laughter.
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