Part 12

I have sometimes called allusion “indirect expression,” and now recognize that the different kinds of allusion with representation through the opposite, as well as the techniques still to be mentioned, can be united into a single large group for which “indirect expression” would be the comprehensive name. Hence, errors of thought—unification—indirect representation—are those points of view under which we can group the techniques of thought-wit which became known to us.

Representation Through the Minute or the Minutest Element

On continuing the investigation of our material we think we recognize a new sub-group of indirect representation which though sharply defined can be illustrated only by few examples. It is that of representation through a minute or minutest element; solving the problem by bringing the entire character to full expression through a minute detail. Correlating this group with the mechanism of allusion is made possible by looking at the triviality as connected with the thing to be presented and as a result of it. For example:

A Jew who was riding in a train had made himself very comfortable; he had unbuttoned his coat, and had put his feet on the seat, when a fashionably dressed gentleman came in. The Jew immediately put on his best behavior and assumed a modest position. The stranger turned over the pages of a book, did some calculation, and pondered a moment and suddenly addressed the Jew. “I beg your pardon, how soon will we have Yom Kippur?” (Day of Atonement). “Oh, oh!” said the Jew, and put his feet back on the seat before he answered.

It cannot be denied that this representation through something minute is allied to the tendency of economy which we found to be the final common element in the investigation of the technique of word-wit.

The following example is much similar.

The doctor who had been summoned to help the baroness in her confinement declared that the critical moment had not arrived, and proposed to the baron that they play a game of cards in the adjoining room in the meantime. After a while the doleful cry of the baroness reached the ears of the men. “Ah, mon Dieu, que je souffre!” The husband jumped up, but the physician stopped him saying, “That’s nothing; let us play on.” A little while later the woman in labor-pains was heard again: “My God, my God, what pains!” “Don’t you want to go in, Doctor?” asked the baron. “By no means, it is not yet time,” answered the doctor. At last there rang from the adjacent room the unmistakable cry, “A-a-a-ai-e-e-e-e-e-e-E-E-E!” The physician then threw down the cards and said, “Now it’s time.”

How the pain allows the original nature to break through all the strata of education, and how an important decision is rightly made dependent upon a seemingly inconsequential utterance—both are shown in this good joke by the successive changes in the cries of this childbearing lady of quality.

Comparison

Another kind of indirect expression of which wit makes use is comparison, which we have not discussed so far because an examination of comparison touches upon new difficulties, or rather it reveals difficulties which have made their appearance on other occasions. We have already admitted that in many of the examples examined we could not banish all doubts as to whether they should really be counted as witty, and have recognized in this uncertainty a serious shock to the principles of our investigation. But in no other material do I feel this uncertainty greater and nowhere does it occur more frequently than in the case of comparison-wit. The feeling which usually says to me—and I dare say to a great many others under the same conditions—this is a joke, this may be written down as witty before even the hidden and essential character of the wit has been uncovered—this feeling I lack most. If at first I experience no hesitation in declaring the comparison to be a witticism, then the next instant I seem to think that the pleasure I thus found was of a different quality than that which I am accustomed to ascribe to a joke. Also the fact that witty comparisons but seldom can evoke the explosive variety of laughter by which a good joke proves itself makes it impossible for me to cast aside the existing doubts, even when I limit myself to the best and most effective examples.

It is easy to demonstrate that there are some especially good and effective examples of comparison which in no way give us the impression of witticisms. A beautiful example of this kind which I have not yet tired of admiring, and the impression of which still clings to me, I shall not deny myself the pleasure of citing. It is a comparison with which Ferd. Lassalle concluded one of his famous pleas (Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiter): “A man like myself who, as I explained to you, had devoted his whole life to the motto ‘Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiter’ (Science and the Workingman), would receive the same impression from a condemnation which in the course of events confronts him as would the chemist, absorbed in his scientific experiments, from the cracking of a retort. With a slight knitting of his brow at the resistance of the material, he would, as soon as the disturbance was quieted, calmly continue his labor and investigations.”

One finds a rich assortment of pertinent and witty comparisons in the writings of Lichtenberg (2 B. of the Göttingen edition, 1853). I shall take the material for our investigation from that source.

“It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.” This may seem witty, but on closer examination one notices that the witty effect does not come from the comparison itself but from a secondary attribute of the same. For the expression “the torch of truth” is no new comparison, but one which has been used for a long time and which has degenerated into a fixed phrase, as always happens when a comparison has the luck to be absorbed into the common usage of speech. But whereas we hardly notice the comparison in the saying, “the torch of truth,” its original full force is restored it by Lichtenberg, since by building further on the comparison it results in a deduction. But the taking of blurred expressions in their full sense is already known to us as a technique of wit; it finds a place with the Manifold Application of the Same Material (p. 35). It may well be that the witty impression created by Lichtenberg’s sentence is due only to its relation to this technique of wit.

The same explanation will undoubtedly hold good for another witty comparison by the same author.

“The man was not exactly a shining light, but a great candlestick.... He was a professor of philosophy.”

To call a scholar a shining light, a “lumen mundi,” has long ceased to be an effective comparison, whether it be originally qualified as a witticism or not. But here the comparison was freshened up and its full force was restored to it by deducting a modification from it and in this way setting up a second and new comparison. The way in which the second comparison came into existence seems to contain the condition of the witticism and not the two comparisons themselves. This would then be a case of Identical Wit-Technique as in the example of the torch.

The following comparison seems witty on other but similarly classifiable grounds: “I look upon reviews as a kind of children’s disease which more or less attacks new-born books. There are cases on record where the healthiest died of it, and the puniest have often lived through it. Many do not get it at all. Attempts have frequently been made to prevent the disease by means of amulets of prefaces and dedications, or to color them up by personal pronunciamentos; but it does not always help.”

The comparison of reviews with children’s diseases is based in the first place upon their susceptibility to attack shortly after they have seen the light of the world. Whether this makes it witty I do not trust myself to decide. But when the comparison is continued, it is found that the later fates of the new books may be represented within the scope of the same or by means of similar comparisons. Such a continuation of a comparison is undoubtedly witty, but we know already to what technique it owes its witty flavor; it is a case of unification or the establishment of an unexpected association. The character of the unification, however, is not changed by the fact that it consists here of a relationship with the first comparison.

Doubt in Witty Comparisons

In a series of other comparisons one is tempted to ascribe an indisputably existing witty impression to another factor which again in itself has nothing to do with the nature of the comparison. These are comparisons which are strikingly grouped, often containing a combination that sounds absurd, which comes into existence as a result of the comparison. Most of Lichtenberg’s examples belong to this group.

“It is a pity that one cannot see the learned bowels of the writers, in order to find out what they have eaten.” “The learned bowels” is a confusing, really absurd attribute which is made clear only by the comparison. How would it be if the witty impression of this comparison should be referred entirely and fully to the confusing character of their composition? This would correspond to one of the means of wit well known to us, namely, representation through absurdity.

Lichtenberg has used the same comparison of the imbibing of reading and educational material with the imbibing of physical nourishment.

“He thought highly of studying in his room and was heartily in favor of learned stable fodder.”

The same absurd or at least conspicuous attributes, which as we are beginning to notice are the real carriers of the wit, mark other comparisons of the same author.

“This is the weatherside of my moral constitution, here I can stand almost anything.”

“Every person has also his moral backside which he does not show except under the stress of necessity and which he covers as long as possible with the pants of good-breeding.”

The “moral backside” is the peculiar attribute which exists as the 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.”