My VIews on the part played by sexuality in the aetiology of the neuroses 6 страница

‘The beadle¹ Sch[äfer] greeted me quite as a colleague, for he too is a writer, and has often mentioned me in his half-yearly writings; and apart from that, he has often cited ²) me, and if he did not find me at home he was always kind enough to write the citation in chalk on my study door.’ (Heine, Harzreise.)

¹ [A university officer (at Göttingen) in charge of undergraduate discipline.]

² [For breaches of discipline.]

Daniel Spitzer, in Wiener Spaziergänge, produced a laconic biographical description, which is certainly also a good joke, of a social type which flourished at the time of the outbreak of speculation: ‘Iron front - iron cash-box - Iron Crown.’ (This last was an order which carried noble rank with it.) A striking example of ‘unification’ - everything, as it were, made of iron! The various, but not very markedly contrasting, meanings of the epithet ‘iron’ make these ‘multiple uses’ possible.

Another example of a play upon words may make the transition to a fresh sub-species of the technique of double meaning easier. The joking medical colleague already mentioned above (on p. 1640) was responsible for this joke at the time of the Dreyfus case: ‘This girl reminds me of Dreyfus. The army doesn’t believe in her innocence.’

The word ‘innocence’, on the double meaning of which the joke is constructed, has in the one context its usual meaning, with ‘fault’ or ‘crime’ as its opposite; but in the other context it has a sexual meaning, of which the opposite is ‘sexual experience’. Now there are a very large number of similar examples of double meaning, in all of which the effect of the joke depends quite specially on the sexual meaning. For this group we may reserve the name of ‘double entendre [Zweideutigkeit]’.

An excellent example of a double entendre of this kind is Spitzer’s joke which has already been recorded on p. 1639: ‘Some people think that the husband has earned a lot and so has been able to lay by a bit [

sich etwas zurückgelegt]; others again think that the wife has lain back a bit [sich etwas zurückgelegt] and so has been able to earn a lot.’

But if we compare this example of double meaning accompanied by double entendre with other examples, a distinction becomes evident which is not without its interest from the point of view of technique. In the ‘innocence’ joke, the one meaning of the word was just as obvious as the other; it would really be hard to decide whether its sexual or non-sexual meaning was the more usual and familiar. But it is otherwise with Spitzer’: example. In this the commonplace meaning of the words ‘sich etwas zurückgelegt’ is by far the more prominent, whereas their sexual meaning is, as it were, covered and hidden and might even escape the notice of an unsuspecting person altogether. By way of a sharp contrast let us take another example of double meaning, in which no attempt is made at thus concealing the sexual meaning: for instance, Heine’s description of the character of a complaisant lady: ‘She could abschlagen¹ nothing except her own water.’ This sounds like a piece of obscenity and hardly gives the impression of a joke.² This peculiarity, however, where in a case of double meaning the two meanings are not equally obvious, can also occur in jokes with no sexual reference - whether because one meaning is more usual than the other or because it is brought to the front by a connection with the other parts of the sentence. (Cf., for instance, ‘C’est le premier vol de l’aigle’.) I propose to describe all these as ‘double meaning with an allusion.’

¹ [‘To refuse’; vulgarly ‘to urinate’.]

² Cf. on this Fischer (1889, 86). He gives the name of ‘Zweideutigkeit’, which I have applied differently in the text, to jokes with a double meaning in which the two meanings are not equally prominent but in which one lies behind the other. Nomenclature of this kind is a matter of convention; linguistic usage has arrived at no firm decision.6 We have already made the acquaintance of such a large number of different joke-techniques that I fear there is some danger of losing our grasp of them. Let us therefore try to summarize them:

I. Condensation:

(a) with formation of composite word,

(b) with modification.

II. Multiple use of the same material:

(c) as a whole and in parts,

(d) in a different order,

(e) with slight modification,

(f) of the same words full and empty.

III. Double meaning:

(g) Meaning as a name and as a thing,

(h) metaphorical and literal meanings,

(i) double meaning proper (play upon words),

(j) double entendre,

(k) double meaning with an allusion.7

This variety and number of techniques has a confusing effect. It might make us feel annoyed at having devoted ourselves to a consideration of the technical methods of jokes, and might make us suspect that after all we have exaggerated their importance as a means for discovering the essential nature of jokes. If only this convenient suspicion were not contradicted by the one incontestable fact that the joke invariably disappears as soon as we eliminate the operation of these techniques from its form of expression! So, in spite of everything, we are led to look for the unity in this multiplicity. It ought to be possible to bring all these techniques under a single heading. As we have already said, it is not difficult to unite the second and third groups. Double meaning (play upon(words) is indeed only the ideal case of the multiple use of the same material. Of these the latter is evidently the more inclusive concept. The examples of dividing up, of re-arrangement of the same material and of multiple use with slight modification (c, d and e) might - though only with some difficulty - be brought under the concept of double meaning. But what is there in common between the technique of the first group (condensation with substitute formation) and that of the two others (multiple use of the same material)?

Well, something very simple and obvious, I should have thought. The multiple use of the same material is, after all, only a special case of condensation; play upon words is nothing other than a condensation without substitute-formation; condensation remains the wider category. All these techniques are dominated by a tendency to compression, or rather to saving. It all seems to be a question of economy. In Hamlet’s words: ‘Thrift, thrift, Horatio!’

Let us test this economy on the different examples. ‘C’est le premier vol de l’aigle.’ It is the eagle’s first flight. Yes, but it is a thieving flight. Luckily for the existence of this joke, ‘vol ' means not only ‘flight’ but ‘theft’ as well. Has no condensation and economy been made? Most certainly. There has been a saving of the whole of the second thought and it has been dropped without leaving a substitute. The double meaning of the word ‘vol ' has made such a substitute unnecessary; or it would be equally true to say that the word ‘vol ' contains the substitute for the suppressed thought without any addition of change having to be made to the first one. That is the advantage of a double meaning.

Another example: ‘Iron front - iron cash-box - Iron Crown’. What an extraordinary saving compared with an expression of the same thought in which ‘iron’ finds no place: ‘With the help of the necessary boldness and lack of conscience it is not difficult to amass a large fortune, and for such services a title will of course be a suitable reward.’

Condensation, and therefore economy, is indeed quite unmistakably present in these examples. But it should be present in every example. Where is the economy hidden in such jokes as ‘Rousseau - roux et sot’ or ‘Antigone - antik? oh nee’, in which we first noticed the absence of condensation and which were our principal motive for putting forward the technique of the repeated use of the same material? It is true that here we should not find that condensation would meet the case; but if instead of it we take the more inclusive concept of economy, we can manage without difficulty. It is easy to point out what we save in the case of Rousseau, Antigone, etc. We save having to express a criticism or give shape to a judgement; both are already there in the name itself. In the example of ‘Leidenschaft - Eifersucht [passion-jealousy]’ we save ourselves the trouble of laboriously constructing a definition: ‘Eifersucht, Leidenschaft - ‘Eifer sucht [‘eagerness seeks’], ‘Leidenschafft’ [‘causes pain’]. We have only to add the linking words and there we have our definition ready made. The case is similar in all the other examples that have so far been analysed. Where there is least saving, as in Saphir’s play upon words ‘Sie kommen um Ihre 100 Dukaten’, there is at any rate a saving of the necessity for framing a new wording for the reply; the wording of the question is sufficient for the answer. The saving is not much, but in it the joke lies. The multiple use of the same words for question and answer is certainly an ‘economy’. Like Hamlet’s view of the rapid sequence of his father’s death and his mother’s marriage:

The funeral baked-meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.9

But before we accept the ‘tendency to economy’ as the most general characteristic of the technique of jokes and ask such questions as where it comes from, what it signifies and how the joke’s yield of pleasure arises from it, we must find space for a doubt which has a right to be heard. It may be that every joke technique shows the tendency to save something in expression: but the relation is not reversible. Not every economy of expression, not every abbreviation, is on that account a joke as well. We reached this point once before, when we were still hoping to find the process of condensation in every joke, and raised the justifiable objection that a laconic remark is not enough to constitute a joke. There must therefore be some peculiar kind of abbreviation and economy on which the characteristic of being a joke depends; and until we know the nature of that peculiarity our discovery of the common element in the techniques of jokes brings us no nearer to a solution of our problem. And let us, further, have the courage to admit that the economies made by the joke-technique do not greatly impress us. They may remind us, perhaps, of the way in which some housewives economize when they spend time and money on a journey to a distant market because vegetables are to be had there a few farthings cheaper. What does a joke save by its technique? The putting together of a few new words, which would mostly have emerged without any trouble. Instead of that, it has to take the trouble to search out the one word which covers the two thoughts. Indeed, it must often first transform one of the thoughts into an unusual form which will provide a basis for its combination with the second thought. Would it not have been simpler, easier, and, in fact, more economical to have expressed the two thoughts as they happened to come, even if this involved no common form of expression? Is not the economy in words uttered more than balanced by the expenditure on intellectual effort? And who saves by that? Who gains by it?

We can evade these doubts provisionally if we transpose them to another place. Have we really already discovered all the kinds of joke-technique? It will certainly be more prudent to collect fresh examples and subject them to analysis.0 We have in fact not yet considered a large - perhaps the most numerous - group of jokes, influenced, perhaps, by the contempt with which they are regarded. They are the kind which are generally known as ‘Kalauer

’ (‘calembourgs’) [‘puns’] and which pass as the lowest form of verbal joke, probably because they are the ‘cheapest’ - can be made with the least trouble. And they do in fact make the least demand on the technique of expression, just as the play upon words proper makes the highest. While in the latter the two meanings should find their expression in identically the same word, which on that account is usually said only once, it is enough for a pun if the two words expressing the two meanings recall each other by some vague similarity, whether they have a general similarity of structure or a rhyming assonance, or whether they share the same first few letters, and so on. A quantity of examples like this of what are not very appropriately described as ‘Klangwitze [sound-jokes]’ occur in the Capuchin monk’s sermon in Wallensteins Lager:

Kümmert sich mehr um den Krug als den Krieg,

Wetzt lieber den Schnabel als den Sabel

........

Frisst den Ochsen lieber als den Oxenstirn’,

........

Der Rheinstrom ist worden zu einem Peinstrom,

Die Klöster sind ausgenommene Nester,

Die Bistümer sind verwandelt in Wüsttümer.

........

Und alle die gesegneten deutschen Länder

Sind verkehrt worden in Elender.¹

¹ [Literally:-

He cares more for the bottle than the battle,

Would rather whet his nose than his sword

........

Would rather eat oxen than Oxenstirn’,

........

The Rhine stream has become a pain stream,

The monastries are robbed bird’s nests,

The bishoprics are transformed into desertrics.

........

And all the blessed German lands

Have been turned into wretched places.]1

Jokes are particularly apt to change one of the vowels in a word. Thus Hevesi (1888, 87) writes of an anti-Imperial Italian poet who was nevertheless obliged later to eulogize a German emperor in hexameters: ‘Since he could not exterminate the Cäsaren [Caesars], he at least eliminated the Cäsuren [caesuras].

Out of the profusion of puns at our disposal, it will perhaps be of special interest to bring up a really bad example, of which Heine is guilty. Having for a long time represented himself to his lady as an ‘Indian prince’, he throws off the mask and confesses: ‘Madame, I have deceived you... I have no more ever been in Kalkutta [Calcutta] than the Kalkuttenbraten [roast Calcutta fowl] that I ate for luncheon yesterday.’ The mistake in this joke clearly lies in the fact that the two similar words in it are not merely similar but actually identical. The bird which he had eaten roast is so called, because it comes, or is supposed to come, from the same Calcutta.

Fischer (1889, 78) has devoted much attention to these forms of joke, and tries to distinguish them sharply from ‘play upon words’. ‘A pun is a bad play upon words, since it plays upon the word not as a word but as a sound.’ The play upon words, however, ‘passes from the sound of the word to the word ‘itself.’ On the other hand, he classes such jokes as famillionär, Antigone (antik? oh nee), etc. among the ‘sound jokes’. I see no necessity for following him in this. In a play upon words, in our view, the word is also only a sound-image, to which one meaning or another is attached. But here, too, linguistic usage makes no sharp distinctions; and if it treats ‘puns’ with contempt and ‘play upon words’ with a certain respect, these judgements of value seem to be determined by considerations other than technical ones. It is worth while paying attention to the kind of jokes that are told one as ‘puns’. There are some people who, when they are in high spirits, can for considerable periods of time, answer every remark addressed to them with a pun. One of my friends, who is a model of discretion where his serious achievements in science are concerned, is apt to boast of this ability. When on one occasion he was holding the company breathless in this way and admiration was expressed for his staying power: ‘Yes’, he said ‘I am lying here auf der Ka-Lauer.’² And when he was finally begged to stop, he agreed to on condition that he was appointed ‘Poeta Ka-laureatus’. Both of these, however, are excellent jokes of condensation with formation of composite words. (‘I am lying here auf der Lauer for making Kalauer [puns].’)

In any case we can already gather from the disputes about the delimitation of puns and play upon words that the former will not be able to help us to discover a completely new joke technique. If, in the case of puns, we give up the claim for the use of the same material in more than one sense, nevertheless the accent falls on rediscovering what is familiar, on the correspondence between the two words that make up the pun; and consequently puns merely form a sub-species of the group which reaches its peak in the play upon words proper.

¹ ‘Ideen’, Chapter V.

² [‘Kalauer’ = ‘pun’. ‘Auf der Lauer’ = ‘on the look-out’.]2 But there really are jokes whose technique resists almost any attempt to connect it with the groups that have so far been considered.

‘The story is told of Heine that he was in a Paris salon one evening conversing with the dramatist Soulié, when there came into the room one of those financial kings of Paris whom people compare with Midas - and not merely on account of their wealth. He was soon surrounded by a crowd who treated him with the greatest deference. "Look there!" Soulié remarked to Heine, "Look at the way the nineteenth century is worshipping the Golden Calf!" With a glance at the object of so much admiration, Heine replied, as though by way of correction: "Oh, he must be older than that by now!"' (Fischer, 1889, 82-3.)

Where shall we look for the technique of this excellent joke? In a play upon words, thinks Fischer: ‘Thus, for instance, the words "Golden Calf" can mean both Mammon and idolatry. In the one case the gold is the main thing and in the other the statue of the animal; it may also serve to characterize, in not precisely flattering terms, someone who has a great deal of money and very little sense.’ (Loc. cit.) If we make the experiment of removing the expression ‘Golden Calf’, we certainly get rid of the joke at the same time. We make Soulié say: ‘Look there! Look at the way the people are crowding round the stupid fellow simply because he’s rich!’ This is no longer a joke and Heine’s reply is also made impossible.

But we must recall that what we are concerned with is not Soulié’s simile - which is a possible joke - but Heine’s reply, which is certainly a much better one. That being so, we have no right to touch the phrase about the Golden Calf: it remains as the precondition of Heine’s mot and our reduction must be directed only to the latter. If we expand the words ‘Oh, he must be older than that by now!’ we can only replace them by something like: ‘Oh, he’s not a calf any longer; he’s a full-grown ox!’ Thus what was necessary for Heine’s joke was that he should no longer take the ‘Golden Calf’ in a metaphorical but in a personal sense and should apply it to the rich man himself. It may even be that this double meaning was already present in Soulié’s remark.

But just a moment! It looks now as though this reduction has not done away with Heine’s joke completely, but on the contrary has left its essence untouched. The position now is that Soulié says: ‘Look there! Look at the way the nineteenth century is worshipping the Golden Calf!’ and Heine replies: ‘Oh, he’s not a calf any longer; he’s an ox already!’ And in this reduced version it is still a joke. But no other reduction of Heine’s mot is possible.

It is a pity that this fine example involves such complicated technical conditions. We can arrive at no clarification of it. So we will leave it and look for another one in which we seem to detect an internal kinship with its predecessor.

It is one of the ‘bath jokes’ which treat of the Galician Jews’ aversion to baths. For we do not insist upon a patent of nobility from our examples. We make no enquiries about their origin but only about their efficiency - whether they are capable of making us laugh and whether they deserve our theoretical interest. And both these two requirements are best fulfilled precisely by Jewish jokes.

‘Two Jews met in the neighbourhood of the bath-house. "Have you taken a bath?" asked one of them. "What?" asked the other in return, "is there one missing?"'

If one laughs at a joke really heartily, one is not in precisely the best mood for investigating its technique. Hence some difficulties arise over making one’s way into these analyses. ‘It was a comical misunderstanding’, we are inclined to say. Yes but what is the technique of the joke? Clearly the use of the word ‘take’ in two meanings. For one of the speakers ‘take’ was the colourless auxiliary; for the other it was the verb with its sense unwatered down. Thus it is a case of the same word used ‘full’ and ‘empty’ (Group II (f)). If we replace the expression ‘taken a bath’ by the equivalent and simpler ‘bathed’, the joke vanishes. The reply no longer fits. Thus the joke is once again attached to the form of expression ‘taken a bath’.

That is so. But nevertheless it seems as though in this case too the reduction has been applied at the wrong point. The joke lies not in the question but in the answer - the second question: ‘What? is there one missing?’ And this answer cannot be robbed of being a joke by any extension or modification, so long as its sense is not interfered with. We have an impression, too, that in the second Jew’s reply the disregarding of the bath is more important than the misunderstanding of the word ‘take’. But here once more we cannot see our way clearly, and we will look for a third example.

It is again a Jewish joke; but this time it is only the setting that is Jewish, the core belongs to humanity in general. No doubt this example too has its unwanted complications, but fortunately they are not the same ones that have so far prevented us from seeing clearly.

‘An impoverished individual borrowed 25 florins from a prosperous acquaintance, with many asseverations of his necessitous circumstances. The very same day his benefactor met him again in a restaurant with a plate of salmon mayonnaise in front of him. The benefactor reproached him: "What? You borrow money from me and then order yourself salmon mayonnaise? Is that what you’ve used my money for?" "I don’t understand you", replied the object of the attack; "if I haven’t any money I can’t eat salmon mayonnaise, and if I have some money I mustn’t eat salmon mayonnaise. Well, then, when am I to eat salmon mayonnaise?"'

Here at last no more trace of a double meaning is to be found. Nor can the repetition of ‘salmon mayonnaise’ contain the joke’s technique, for it is not ‘multiple use’ of the same material but a real repetition of identical material called for by the subject-matter of the anecdote. We may for a time be quite baffled by this analysis and may even think of taking refuge in denying that the anecdote - though it made us laugh - possesses the character of a joke.

What more is there deserving of comment in the impoverished person’s reply? That it has been very markedly given the form of a logical argument. But quite unjustifiably, for the reply is in fact illogical. The man defends himself for having spent the money lent to him on a delicacy and asks, with an appearance of reason, when he is to eat salmon. But that is not the correct answer. His benefactor is not reproaching him with treating himself to salmon precisely on the day on which he borrowed the money; he is reminding him that in his circumstances he has no right to think of such delicacies at all. The impoverished bon vivant disregards this only possible meaning of the reproach, and answers another question as though he had misunderstood the reproach.

Can it be that the technique of this joke lies precisely in this diverting of the reply from the meaning of the reproach? If so, a similar change of standpoint, a similar shifting of the psychical emphasis, may perhaps be traceable in the two earlier examples, which we felt were akin to this one.

And, lo and behold! this suggestion is an easy success and in fact reveals the technique of those examples. Soulié pointed out to Heine that society in the nineteenth century worshipped the ‘Golden Calf’ just as did the Jews in the Wilderness. An appropriate answer by Heine might have been ‘Yes, such is human nature; thousands of years have made no change in it’ or something similar by way of assent. But Heine diverted his answer from the thought suggested to him and made no reply to it at all. He made use of the double meaning of which the phrase ‘Golden Calf’ is capable to branch off along a side-track. He caught hold of one component of the phrase, ‘Calf’, and replied, as though the emphasis in Soulié’s remark had been upon it: ‘Oh, he’s not a calf any longer’.. etc.¹

¹ Heine’s answer combines two joke-techniques: a diversion combined with an allusion. He did not say straight out: ‘He’s an ox.’5

The diversion in the bath-joke is even plainer. This example calls for a graphic presentation:

The first Jew asks: ‘Have you taken a bath?’ The emphasis is on the element ‘bath’.

The second replies as though the question had been: ‘Have you taken a bath?’

This shifting of the emphasis is only made possible by the wording ‘taken a bath’. If it had run ‘have you bathed?’ no displacement would have been possible. The non-joking answer would then have been: ‘Bathed? What d’you mean? I don’t know what that is.’ But the technique of the joke lies in the displacement of the accent from ‘bath’ to ‘taken’.¹

Let us go back to the ‘Salmon Mayonnaise’, since it is the most straightforward example. What is new in it deserves our attention in various directions. First we must give a name to the technique brought to light in it. I propose to describe it as ‘displacement’, since its essence lies in the diversion of the train of thought, the displacement of the psychical emphasis on to a topic other than the opening one. Our next task is to enquire into the relation between the technique of displacement and the form of expression of the joke. Our example (‘Salmon Mayonnaise’) shows us that a displacement joke is to a high degree independent of verbal expression. It depends not on words but on the train of thought. No replacement of the words will enable us to get rid of it so long as the sense of the answer is retained. Reduction is only possible if we change the train of thought and make the gourmet reply directly to the reproach which he has evaded in the version represented in the joke. The reduced version would then run: ‘I can’t deny myself what tastes good to me, and it’s a matter of indifference to me where I get the money from to pay for it. There you have the explanation of why I’m eating salmon mayonnaise on the very day you’ve lent me the money.’ But that would not be a joke; it would be a piece of cynicism.

¹ The word ‘take [nehmen]’ is very well adapted to form a basis for play upon words owing to the variety of ways in which it can be used. I will give a plain example, as a contrast to the displacement jokes reported above: ‘A well-known stock-exchange speculator and bank-director was walking with a friend along the Ringstrasse. As they went past a cafe he remarked: "Let’s go inside and take something!" His friend held him back: "But, Herr Hofrat, the place is full of people!" ‘

It is instructive to compare this joke with another that is very close to it in meaning:

‘A man who had taken to drink supported himself by tutoring in a small town. His vice gradually became known, however, and as a result he lost most of his pupils. A friend was commissioned to urge him to mend his ways. "Look, you could get the best tutoring in the town if you would give up drinking. So do give it up!" "Who do you think you are?" was the indignant reply. "I do tutoring so that I can drink. Am I to give up drinking so that I can get tutoring?"'

This joke gives the same appearance of being logical that we saw in the ‘Salmon Mayonnaise’; but it is not a displacement joke. The reply was a direct one. The cynicism which was concealed in the former joke is openly admitted in this one: ‘Drinking is the most important thing for me.’ Actually the technique of this joke is extremely scanty and cannot explain its effectiveness. It consists simply in the rearrangement of the same material or, more precisely, in the reversal of the relation of means and ends between drinking and doing or getting tutoring. As soon as my reduction ceases to emphasize this factor in its form of expression, the joke fades; for instance: ‘What a senseless suggestion! The important thing for me is the drinking, not the tutoring. After all, tutoring is only a means to enable me to go on drinking.’ So the joke did in fact depend on its form of expression.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23