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Whether the one or the other of these two views seems to us to throw more light on the question, the discussion of bewilderment and enlightenment brings us closer to a particular discovery. For if the comic effect of Heine’s ‘famillionairely’ depends on the solution of the apparently meaningless word, the ‘joke’ must no doubt be ascribed to the formation of that word and to the characteristics of the word thus formed.

Another peculiarity of jokes, quite unrelated to what we have just been considering, is recognized by all the authorities as essential to them. ‘Brevity is the body and the soul of wit, it is its very self,’ says Jean Paul (1804, Part II, Paragraph 42), merely modifying what the old chatterbox Polonius says in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (II, 2):

‘Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,

I will be brief.’

In this connection the account given by Lipps (1898, 90) of the brevity of jokes is significant: ‘A joke says what it has to say, not always in few words, but in too few words - that is, in words that are insufficient by strict logic or by common modes of thought and speech. It may even actually say what it has to say by not saying it.’

We have already learnt from the connection of jokes with caricature that they ‘must bring forward something that is concealed or hidden’ (Fischer, 1889, 51). I lay stress on this determinant once more, because it too has more to do with the nature of jokes than with their being part of the comic.0 I am well aware that these scanty extracts from the works of writers upon jokes cannot do them justice. In view of the difficulties standing in the way of my giving an unmistakably correct account of such complicated and subtle trains of thought, I cannot spare curious enquirers the labour of obtaining the information they desire from the original sources. But I am not sure that they will come back fully satisfied. The criteria and characteristics of jokes brought up by these authors and collected above - activity, relation to the content of our thoughts, the characteristic of playful judgement, the coupling of dissimilar things, contrasting ideas, ‘sense in nonsense’, the succession of bewilderment and enlightenment, the bringing forward of what is hidden, and the peculiar brevity of wit - all this, it is true, seems to us at first sight so very much to the point and so easily confirmed by instances that we cannot be in any danger of underrating such views. But they are dijecta membra, which we should like to see combined into an organic whole. When all is said and done, they contribute to our knowledge of jokes no more than would a series of anecdotes to the description of some personality of whom we have a right to ask for a biography. We are entirely without insight into the connection that presumably exists between the separate determinants - what, for instance, the brevity of a joke can have to do with its characteristic of being a playful judgement. We need to be told, further, whether a joke must satisfy all these determinants in order to be a proper joke, or need only satisfy some, and if so which can be replaced by others and which are indispensable. We should also wish to have a grouping and classification of jokes on the basis of the characteristics considered essential. The classification that we find in the literature rests on the one hand on the technical methods employed in them (e.g. punning or play upon words) and on the other hand on the use made of them in speech (e.g. jokes used for the purposes of caricature or of characterization, or joking snubs).

We should thus find no difficulty in indicating the aims of any new attempt to throw light on jokes. To be able to count on success, we should have either to approach the work from new angles or to endeavour to penetrate further by increased attention and deeper interest. We can resolve that we will at least not fail in this last respect. It is striking with what a small number of instances of jokes recognized as such the authorities are satisfied for the purposes of their enquiries, and how each of them takes the same ones over from his predecessors. We must not shirk the duty of analysing the same instances that have already served the classical authorities on jokes. But it is our intention to turn besides to fresh material so as to obtain a broader foundation for our conclusions. It is natural then that we should choose as the subjects of our investigation examples of jokes by which we ourselves have been most struck in the course of our lives and which have made us laugh the most.

Is the subject of jokes worth so much trouble? There can, I think, be no doubt of it. Leaving on one side the personal motives which make me wish to gain an insight into the problems of jokes and which will come to light in the course of these studies, I can appeal to the fact that there is an intimate connection between all mental happenings - a fact which guarantees that a psychological discovery even in a remote field will be of an unpredictable value in other fields. We may also bear in mind the peculiar and even fascinating charm exercised by jokes in our society. A new joke acts almost like an event of universal interest; it is passed from one person to another like the news of the latest victory. Even men of eminence who have thought it worth while to tell the story of their origins, of the cities and countries they have visited, and of the important people with whom they have associated, are not ashamed in their autobiographies to report their having heard some excellent joke.¹

¹ Von Falke’s Memoirs, 1897.2

II THE TECHNIQUE OF JOKES

Let us follow up a lead presented to us by chance and consider the first example of a joke that we came across in the preceding chapter.

In the part of his Reisebilder entitled ‘Die Bäder von Lucca’ Heine introduces the delightful figure of the lottery-agent and extractor of corns, Hirsch-Hyacinth of Hamburg, who boasts to the poet of his relations with the wealthy Baron Rothschild, and finally say: ‘And, as true as God shall grant me all good things, Doctor, I sat beside Salomon Rothschild and he treated me quite as his equal - quite famillionairely.’

Heymans and Lipps used this joke (which is admittedly an excellent and most amusing one) to illustrate their view that the comic effect of jokes is derived from ‘bewilderment and illumination’ (see above). We, however, will leave that question on one side and ask another: ‘What is it that makes Hirsch-Hyacinth’s remark into a joke?’ There can be only two possible answers: either the thought expressed in the sentence possesses in itself the character of being a joke or the joke resides in the expression which the thought has been given in the sentence. In whichever of these directions the character of being a joke may lie, we will pursue it further and try to lay hands on it.

A thought can in general be expressed in various linguistic forms - in various words, that is - which can represent it with equal aptness. Hirsch-Hyacinth’s remark presents his thought in a particular form of expression and, as it seems to us, a specially odd form and not the one which is most easily intelligible. Let us try to express the same thought as accurately as possible in other words. Lipps has already done so, and in that way has to some extent explained the poet’s intention. He writes (1898, 87): ‘Heine, as we understand it, means to say that his reception was on familiar terms - of the not uncommon kind, which does not as a rule gain in agreeableness from having a flavour of millionairedom about it.’ We shall not be altering the sense of this if we give it another shape which perhaps fits better into Hirsch-Hyacinth’s speech: ‘Rothschild treated me quite as his equal, quite familiarly that is, so far as a millionaire can.’ ‘A rich man’s condescension’, we should add, ‘always involves something not quite pleasant for whoever experiences it.’¹

¹ We shall return to this same joke later on; and we shall then have occasion to make a correction in the translation of it given by Lipps which our own version has taken as its starting-point. This, however, will not affect the discussion that follows here.3

Whether, now, we keep to the one or the other of the two equally valid texts of the thought, we can see that the question we asked ourselves is already decided. In this example the character of being a joke does not reside in the thought. What Heine has put into Hirsch-Hyacinth’s mouth is a correct and acute observation, an observation of unmistakable bitterness, which is understandable in a poor man faced by such great wealth; but we should not venture to describe it as in the nature of a joke. If anyone is unable in considering the translation to get away from his recollection of the shape given to the thought by the poet, and thus feels that nevertheless the thought in itself is also in the nature of a joke, we can point to a sure criterion of the joking character having been lost in the translation. Hirsch-Hyacinth’s remark made us laugh aloud, whereas its accurate translation by Lipps or our own version of it, though it may please us and make us reflect, cannot possibly raise a laugh.

But if what makes our example a joke is not anything that resides in its thought, we must look for it in the form, in the wording in which it is expressed. We have only to study the peculiarity of its form of expression to grasp what may be termed the verbal or expressive technique of this joke, something which must stand in an intimate relation with the essence of the joke, since, if it is replaced by something else, the character and effect of the joke disappear. Moreover, in attributing so much importance to the verbal form of jokes we are in complete agreement with the authorities. Thus Fischer (1889, 72) writes: ‘It is in the first place its sheer form that makes a judgement into a joke, and we are reminded of a saying of Jean Paul’s which, in a single aphorism, explains and exemplifies this precise characteristic of jokes - "Such is the victorious power of sheer position, whether among warriors or words.”’

In what, then, does the ‘technique’ of this joke consist? What has happened to the thought, as expressed, for instance, in our version, in order to turn it into a joke that made us laugh so heartily? Two things - as we learn by comparing our version with the poet’s text. First, a considerable abbreviation has occurred. In order to express fully the thought contained in the joke, we were obliged to add to the words ‘R. treated me quite as his equal, quite familiarly’ a postscript which, reduced to its shortest terms, ran ‘that is, so far as a millionaire can’. And even so we felt the need for a further explanatory sentence.¹ The poet puts it far more shortly: ‘R. treated me quite as his equal - quite famillionairely.’ In the joke, the whole limitation added by the second sentence to the first, which reports the familiar treatment, has disappeared.

But not quite without leaving a substitute from which we can reconstruct it. For a second change has also been made. The word ‘familiär [familiarly]’ in the unjoking expression of the thought has been transformed in the text of the joke into ‘famillionär [famillionairly]’; and there can be no doubt that it is precisely on this verbal structure that the joke’s character as a joke and its power to cause a laugh depend. The newly constructed word coincides in its earlier portion with the ‘familiär’ of the first sentence, and in its final syllables with the ‘Millionär ' of the second sentence. It stands, as it were, for the ‘Millionär’ portion of the second sentence and thus for the whole second sentence, and so puts us in a position to infer the second sentence that has been omitted in the text of the joke. It can be described as a ‘composite structure’ made up of the two components ‘familiär’ and ‘Millionär’, and it is tempting to give a diagrammatic picture of the way in which it is derived from those two words:²

F A M I L I Ä R

M I L I O N Ä R

F A M I L I ON Ä R

¹ This is equally true of Lipps’s translation.

² The two words are printed one in Roman and the other in Italic type, and the syllables common to them both are printed in thick type. The second ‘l’, which is scarcely pronounced, could of course be left out of account. It seems probable that the fact of the two words having several syllables in common offered the joke-technique the occasion for constructing the composite word.

The process which has converted the thought into a joke can then be represented in the following manner, which may at first sight seem fantastic, but nevertheless produces precisely the outcome that is really before us:

‘R. treated me quite familiär,

that is, so far as a Millionär can.’

Let us now imagine that a compressing force is brought to bear on these sentences and that for some reason the second is the less resistant one. It is thereupon made to disappear, while its most important constituent, the word ‘Millionär’, which has succeeded in rebelling against being suppressed, is, as it were, pushed up against the first sentence, and fused with the element of that sentence which is so much like it - ‘familiär’. And the chance possibility, which thus arises, of saving the essential part of the second sentence actually favours the dissolution of its other, less important, constituents. The joke is thus generated:

‘R. treated me quite famili on är.’

/ \

(mili) (är)

If we leave out of account any such compressing force, which indeed is unknown to us, the process by which the joke is formed - that is, the joke-technique - in this instance might be described as ‘condensation accompanied by the formation of a substitute’; and in the present example the formation of the substitute consists in the making of a ‘composite word’. This composite word ‘famillionär’, which is unintelligible in itself but is immediately understood in its context and recognized as being full of meaning, is the vehicle of the joke’s laughter compelling effect - the mechanism of which, however, is not made in any way clearer by our discovery of the joke-technique. In what way can a linguistic process of condensation, accompanied by the formation of a substitute by means of a composite word, give us pleasure and make us laugh? This is evidently a different problem, whose treatment we may postpone till we have found a way of approaching it. For the present we will keep to the technique of jokes.

Our expectation that the technique of jokes cannot be a matter of indifference from the point of view of discovering their essence leads us at once to enquire whether there are other examples of jokes constructed like Heine’s ‘famillionär’. There are not very many of them, but nevertheless enough to make up a small group which are characterized by the formation of composite words. Heine himself has derived a second joke from the word ‘Millionär’ - copying from himself, as it were. In Chapter XIV of his ‘Ideen’ he speaks of a ‘Millionarr’, which is an obvious combination of ‘Millionär’ and ‘Narr’¹ and, just as in the first example, brings out a suppressed subsidiary thought.

Here are some other examples I have come upon. - There is a certain fountain [Brunnen] in Berlin, the erection of which brought the Chief Burgomaster Forckenbeck into much disfavour. The Berliners call it the ‘

Forckenbecken’, and there is certainly a joke in this description, even though it was necessary to replace the word ‘Brunnen’ by its obsolete equivalent ‘Becken’ in order to combine it into a whole with the name of the Burgomaster. - The voice of Europe once made the cruel joke of changing a potentate’s name from Leopold to Cleopold, on account of the relations he had at one time with a lady with the first name of Cleo. This undoubted product of condensation keeps alive an annoying allusion at the cost of a single letter. - Proper names in general fall easy victims to this kind of treatment by the joke-technique. There were in Vienna two brothers named Salinger, one of whom was a Börsensensal. This provided a handle for calling him ‘Sensalinger’, while his brother, to distinguish him, was given the unflattering name of ‘Scheusalinger’² This was convenient, and certainly a joke; I cannot say whether it was justified. But jokes do not as a rule enquire much into that.

¹ [The German for ‘fool’.]

² [‘Scheusal’ means ‘monstrous creature’.]7

I have been told the following condensation joke. A young man who had hitherto led a gay life abroad paid a call, after a considerable absence, on a friend living here. The latter was surprised to see an Ehering [wedding-ring] on his visitor’s hand, ‘What?’ he exclaimed, ‘are you married?’ ‘Yes’, was the reply, ‘Trauring but true.’¹ The joke is an excellent one. The word ‘Trauring’ combines both components: ‘Ehering’ changed into ‘Trauring’ and the sentence ‘traurig, aber wahr [sad but true]’. The effect of the joke is not interfered with by the fact that here the composite word is not, like ‘famillionär’, an unintelligible and otherwise non-existent structure, but one which coincides entirely with one of the two elements represented.

In the course of conversation I myself once unintentionally provided the material for a joke that is once again quite analogous to ‘famillionär’. I was talking to a lady about the great services that had been rendered by a man of science who I considered had been unjustly neglected. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘the man deserves a monument.’ ‘Perhaps he will get one some day,’ I replied, ‘but momentan he has very little success.’ ‘Monument’ and ‘momentan’ are opposites. The lady proceeded to unite them: ‘Well, let us wish him a monumentan² success.’

¹ [‘Traurig’ would have meant ‘sad’. ‘Trauring’ is a synonym for ‘Ehering.’]

² [A non-existing word. ‘Monumental’ (as in English) would have been expected.]8

I owe a few examples in foreign languages, which show the same mechanism of condensation as our ‘famillionär’, to an excellent discussion of the same subject in English by A. A. Brill (1911).

The English author De Quincey, Brill tells us, somewhere remarked that old people are inclined to fall into their ‘anecdotage’. This word is a fusion of the partly overlapping words

ANECDOTE

and DOTAGE.

In an anonymous short story Brill once found the Christmas season described as ‘the alcoholidays’ - a similar fusing of

ALCOHOL

and HOLIDAYS.

After Flaubert had published his celebrated novel Salammbô, the scene of which is laid in ancient Carthage, Sainte-Beuve laughed at it, on account of its elaboration of detail, as being ‘Carthaginoiserie’;

CARTHAGINOIS

CHINOISERIE.

But the best example of a joke of this group originated from one of the leading men in Austria, who, after important scientific and public work, now fills one of the highest offices in the State. I have ventured to make use of the jokes which are ascribed to him, and all of which in fact bear the same impress, as material for these researches,¹ above all because it would have been hard to find any better.

Herr N.’s attention was drawn one day to the figure of a writer who had become well-known from a series of undeniably boring essays which he had contributed to a Vienna daily paper. All of these essays dealt with small episodes in the relations of the first Napoleon with Austria. The author had red hair. As soon as Herr N. heard his name mentioned he asked: ‘Is not that the roter Fadian² that runs through the story of the Napoleonids?’

¹ Have I the right to do so? At least I have not obtained my knowledge of these jokes through an indiscretion. They are generally known in this city (Vienna) and are to be found in everyone’s mouth. A number of them have been given publicity by Eduard Hanslick in the Neue Freie Presse and in his autobiography. As regards the others, I must offer my apologies for any possible distortions, which, in the case of oral tradition, are scarcely to be avoided.

² [‘Roter’ means ‘red’, ‘scarlet’. ‘Fadian’ means ‘dull fellow’. The termination ‘-ian’ is occasionally added to an adjective, giving the somewhat contemptuous sense of ‘fellow’. Thus ‘grob’ means ‘coarse’, ‘Grobian’ means ‘coarse fellow: ‘dumm’ means ‘stupid’, ‘Dummian’ means ‘stupid fellow’. The adjective ‘fade’ or ‘fad’ means (like its French equivalent) ‘insipid’, ‘dull’. Finally, ‘Faden’ means ‘thread’.]

In order to discover the technique of this joke, we must apply to it the process of reduction which gets rid of the joke by changing the mode of expression and instead introducing the original complete meaning, which can be inferred with certainty from a good joke. Herr N.’s joke about the ‘roter Fadian’ proceeds from two components - a depreciatory judgement upon the writer and a recollection of the famous simile with which Goethe introduces the extracts ‘From Ottilie’s Diary’ in the Wahlverwandtschaften.¹ The ill-tempered criticism may have run: ‘So this is the person who is for ever and ever writing nothing but boring stories about Napoleon in Austria!’ Now this remark is not in the least a joke. Nor is Goethe’s pretty analogy a joke, and it is certainly not calculated to make us laugh. It is only when the two are brought into connection with each other and submitted to the peculiar process of condensation and fusion that a joke emerges - and a joke of the first order.²

¹ ‘We hear of a peculiar practice in the English Navy. Every rope in the king’s fleet, from the strongest to the weakest, is woven in such a way that a roter Faden [scarlet thread] runs through its whole length. It cannot be extracted without undoing the whole rope, and it proves that even the smallest piece is crown property. In just the same way a thread of affection and dependence runs through Ottilie’s diary, binding it all together and characterizing the whole of it.’ Goethe, Sophienausgabe, 20, 212.)

² I need hardly point out how little this observation, which can invariably be made, fits in with the assertion that a joke is a playful judgement.0

The linking of the disparaging judgement upon the boring historian with the pretty analogy in the Wahlverwandtschaften must have taken place (for reasons which I cannot yet make intelligible) in a less simple manner than in many similar cases. I shall try to represent what was probably the actual course of events by the following construction. First, the element of the constant recurrence of the same theme in the stories may have awoken a faint recollection in Herr N. of the familiar passage in the Wahlverwandtschaften, which is as a rule wrongly quoted: ‘it runs like a roter Faden [scarlet thread].’ The ‘roter Faden’ of the analogy now exercised a modifying influence of the expression of the first sentence, as a result of the chance circumstance that the person insulted was also rot [red] - that is to say had red hair. It may then have run: ‘So it is that red person who writes the boring stories about Napoleon!’ And now the process began which brought about the condensation of the two pieces. Under its pressure, which had found its first fulcrum in the sameness of the element ‘rot’, the ‘boring’ was assimilated to the ‘Faden [thread]’ and was changed into ‘fad [dull]’; after this the two components were able to fuse together into the actual text of the joke, in which, in this case, the quotation has an almost greater share than the derogatory judgement, which was undoubtedly present alone to begin with.

‘So it is that red person who writes this fade stuff about N[apoleon].

The red Faden that runs through everything.’

—————————————————————————————————-

‘Is not that the red Fadian that runs through the story of the N[apoleonids]?’

In a later chapter I shall add a justification, but also a correction, to this account, when I come to analyse this joke from points of view other than purely formal ones. But whatever else about it may be in doubt, there can be no question that a condensation has taken place. The result of the condensation is, on the one hand, once again a considerable abbreviation; but on the other hand, instead of the formation of a striking composite word, there is an interpenetration of the constituents of the two components. It is true that ‘roter Faden’ would be capable of existing as a mere term of abuse; but in our instance it is certainly a product of condensation.

If at this point a reader should become indignant at a method of approach which threatens to ruin his enjoyment of jokes without being able to throw any light on the source of that enjoyment, I would beg him to be patient for the moment. At present we are only dealing with the technique of jokes; and the investigation even of this promises results, if we pursue it sufficiently far.

The analysis of the last example has prepared us to find that, if we meet with the process of condensation in still other examples, the substitute for what is suppressed may be not a composite structure, but some other alteration of the form of expression. We can learn what this other form of substitute may be from another of Herr N.’s jokes.

‘I drove with him tête-à-bête.’ Nothing can be easier than the reduction of this joke. Clearly it can only mean: ‘I drove with X tête-à-tête, and X is a stupid ass.’

Neither of these sentences is a joke. They could be put together: ‘I drove with that stupid ass X tête-à-tête’, and that is not a joke either. The joke only arises if the ‘stupid ass’ is left out, and, as a substitute for it, the ‘t’ in one ‘tête’ is turned into a ‘b’. With this slight modification the suppressed ‘ass’ has nevertheless once more found expression. The technique of this group of jokes can be described as ‘condensation accompanied by slight modification’, and it may be suspected that the slighter the modification the better will be the joke.

The technique of another joke is similar, though not without its complication. In the course of a conversation about someone in whom there was much to praise, but much to find fault with, Herr N. remarked: ‘Yes, vanity is one of his four Achilles heels.’¹ In this case the slight modification consists in the fact that, instead of the one Achilles heel which the hero himself must have possessed, four are here in question. Four heels - but only an ass has four heels. Thus the two thoughts that are condensed in the joke ran: ‘Apart from his vanity, Y is an eminent man; all the same I don’t like him - he’s an ass rather than a man.’²

¹ [Footnote added 1912:] It seems that this joke was applied earlier by Heine to Alfred de Musset.

² One of the complications in the technique of this example lies in the fact that the modification by which the omitted insult is replaced must be described as an allusion to the latter, since it only leads to it by a process of inference. For another factor that complicates the technique here, see below.2

I happened to hear another similar, but much simpler, joke in statu nascendi in a family circle. Of two brothers at school, one was an excellent and the other a most indifferent scholar. Now it happened once that the exemplary boy too came to grief at school; and their mother referred to this while expressing her concern that it might mean the beginning of a lasting deterioration. The boy who had hitherto been overshadowed by his brother readily grasped the opportunity. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘Karl’s going backwards on all fours.’

The modification here consists in a short addition to the assurance that he too was of the opinion that the other boy was going backwards. But this modification represented and replaced a passionate plea on his own behalf: ‘You mustn’t think he’s so much cleverer than I am simply because he’s more successful at school. After all he’s only a stupid ass - that’s to say, much stupider than I am.’

Another, very well-known joke of Herr N.’s offers a neat example of condensation with slight modification. He remarked of a personage in public life: ‘he has a great future behind him.’ The man to whom this joke referred was comparatively young, and he had seemed destined by his birth, education and personal qualities to succeed in the future to the leadership of a great political party and to enter the government at its head. But times changed; the party became inadmissible as a government, and it could be foreseen that the man who had been predestined to be its leader would come to nothing as well. The shortest reduced version by which this joke could be replaced would run: ‘The man has had a great future before him, but he has it no longer.’ Instead of the ‘had’ and the second clause, there was merely the small change made in the principal clause of replacing ‘before’ by its contrary, ‘behind’.¹

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