Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master

Chapter 2

Humour as an Art

Humour is a marvellous art; humour is a difficult art. To be a humorist of class, that is to say, someone consciously skilled in comic artistry, is not at all an easy task. To be so requires a different sort of genius.

Yes, only a genius can become a veritable humorist; yet the irony of the situation is that an altogether different and contrary impression prevails in the popular mind. As Prof. Walter Jerrold has sorrowfully remarked, men of wit and humour are not as a rule considered men of letters, or even persons of literary training or experience.¹

How erroneous the idea is! The poet talked of the "loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind". Here, 'vacant mind' is in reality an expression of deep approbation; by this he meant a mind that is free from undue care and anxiety, delivered from the heavy and depressing load of the boredom of life. But popular interpretation has shifted the sense of the word 'vacant' to mean empty-headed and idiotic! All laughter, according to this notion, arises out of an unoccupied mind, and, who does not know, 'idle laughter' has to be sharply contrasted with its polar opposite 'profound reflection', "as if it were better to be puzzled than to be happy!"²

It is not at all surprising that a bygone Senator of U.S.A. named Corwin exclaimed in exasperation: "The world has a contempt for the man who amuses it. You must have to be solemn - solemn as an ass. All the great monuments on earth have been erected over the graves of solemn asses."³

Let us not bother about the mistaken notion of the generality of common men. For, all connoisseurs of higher scholarship recognise that "learning should be bright and luminous, as cheerful as Sydney Smith, as optimistic as Leonardo da Vinci: gloom, like that of Carlyle, mostly means indigestion!"⁴

Be it that laughter is decried by the self-styled serious

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people, but even the Gods are said to laugh - they who are the masters of the Spirit's Delight. The dazzling whiteness of Mount Kailasa is in Kalidasa's visionary eyes "the eternal laughter of a God". And Homer's Gods? - Are they not constantly breaking into laughter over the follies of men below?⁵ In this connection, let us recall the witty remark Sri Aurobindo once made to his anxiety-laden disciple, Dilip Kumar: "Dilip, there is laughter in the Kingdom of Heaven, though there may be no marriage there."

Be that as it may, let us first be clear in our mind about what humour actually is and what causes laughter in us and finally what the relation is between humour and laughter.

I. What is Humour?

Let us for the moment take 'humour', not as a specialised and particular mode of expression of the comic, but rather in its generic sense, in its most comprehensive connotation.

Humour has come to acquire two different shades of meaning, although closely allied to each other: (i) a person's ability to perceive and appreciate the comic; and (ii) one's capacity to express the comic in an art form (through words or pictures or pantomimes, for example). These two senses are, of course, in relation to the perceiving subject but there is a third meaning attached to the object or vehicle of expression. In this last case 'humour' signifies the comic quality of the expression. We have thus various linguistic expressions such as, (i) a man of humour; (ii) a humorous man; (iii) humorous writing; (iv) to appreciate the humour of a remark; etc.

But how has the word 'humour' come into the language? What is its etymological significance? Has this significance evolved with the passage of time?

In its Latin origin 'humour' signified 'wetness', a meaning which has left its vestiges in the current expressions 'humid' and 'humidity'. With Hippocrates and his medical successors 'humour' took on a specific sense of wetness, 'the liquid contents

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flowing through the human body'. These 'humours' were supposed to be of four kinds - the blood, the phlegm, the yellow bile and the black bile, and man's general health was stated to depend entirely on the proper harmony of these four humours. The physician's task was thus perceived to be to 'keep a man in good humour'. With the advent of the Middle Ages 'humour' lost this specific sense and acquired instead a general meaning of 'disposition' and 'temperament'. In course of time the expression branched off in two different directions, acquiring in the process two different meanings: (i) caprice, whim, wilfulness; (ii) something odd, exceptional or incongruous. By and by the second sense gained ground and we have our modern word 'humour' which signifies "not merely incongruity but something pleasing and amusingly incongruous."⁶

Yes, 'amusingly incongruous'. And the special mention of this character makes us recall with pleasure the felicitous words of Amal Kiran, a senior disciple of Sri Aurobindo:

"Sri Aurobindo remarks that humour is the salt of life. Well, it is at least one of the salts. You know there are many kinds of salts — bathing salts, smelling salts, somersaults. I suppose humour should be considered somersaulty!"⁷

"Somersaulty" is OK. But any and every type of somersault cannot produce humour. So the question is, how to make it more specific. In other words, as the logicians would say, how to 'define' humour. But is it at all possible to convey in words what humour is, to someone who has no sense of humour? The task is difficult, so difficult indeed that Isaac Barrow 'defined' it as follows:

"Often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how."⁸

Yet scholars and analysts have tried to tackle the task, and let us see what tentative definitions they have offered us for the strange phenomenon and faculty of humour.

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Aristotle felt it to be the perception of some sort of unseemliness, of some defect that does not involve pain or injury.

According to Henri Bergson the comic is something 'mechanical' encrusted upon the living.

In Immanuel Kant's view the comic is "an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing."

Each of the above ways of looking at humour contains an element of truth but not the whole truth. Exclusively taken, they miss something essential to the production of genuine humour.

Prof. Walter Jerrold has quoted a famous lexicographer defining humour as follows:

1.Definition (applicable to the 2nd sense of humour).

"The faculty of associating ideas in new and ingenious, and at the same time pleasing way, exhibited in apt language and felicitous combinations of words and thoughts, by which unexpected resemblances between things apparently unlike are vividly set before the mind, so as to produce a shock of pleasant surprise; facetiousness."

2.Definition (conforming to the 1st sense):

"A mental faculty which tends to discover incongruous resemblances between things which essentially differ, or essential differences between things put forth as the same, the result being internal mirth or an outburst of laughter."⁹

Leaving these cumbrous dictionary definitions behind, we may formulate our working definition in this way:

Humour may mean either the expression of the incongruities of life, or the sense in us which enables us to express it. Humour is "the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof."¹⁰

But what about the relation between humour and laughter?

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II. Humour and Laughter

Laughter is generally taken to be a cognate phenomenon of humour. But it is a fact that some persons are found to laugh a good deal without possessing for that matter any great sense of refined humour. On the other hand, there are quite a few genuinely humorous people who themselves seldom laugh although their humorous words or writings may make others laugh a lot. In the recent past there has been a great writer in Bengali literature of the name of Rajshekhar Basu. He was a scientist by profession, also at the same time an erudite scholar and a reputed lexicographer. In his personal life and social dealings he was a person of serious demeanour, not given to jollity at all. Yet, under the nom de plume Parashuram, he wrote a good number of stories and novels which can be counted as gems in the field of humorous literature. And his case is by no means unique.

Thus we see that humour and laughter need not be always invariably associated. Social scientists and psychologists have studied the phenomenon and come to the conclusion that the comic laughter is only one particular type of laughter; laughter has many other varieties and may arise from altogether different factors. For example, laughter may be induced

(a)by a purely physical cause like tickling, or inhalation of nitrogen monoxide or the so-called 'laughing gas';

(b)by the automatic reflex-imitation of others' laughter;

(c)by a nervous relaxation;

(d)by joy and exultation of any sort;

(e)by a sense of escape or deliverance;

(f)by what M. Dupreel has called "social welcoming" or "social exclusion";

(g)by what Profs. A. Stern and C. Lalo have characterised as the negative tendency to devalue and denigrate the higher and the superior: thus, an unrefined person hurls his laughter of ridicule against all that is good and beautiful, and a foolish man laughs at anything and everything that he cannot understand; and finally

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(h) by what is comic in nature.

The comic laughter should therefore be clearly distinguished from all other non-comic phenomena of laughter. But what is this comic laughter due to? What are the essential elements that provoke or sustain it?

III. Theories of Comic Laughter

There have been many contending theories in the field. From Socrates to Koestler various thinkers have tried to explain the reason for the comic feeling and the consequent laughter. Each of them has sought to pin-point one essential element in the complex phenomenon that is laughter of humour.

Sully in his An Essay on Laughter shows that all these diverse theories can be brought under three main catogories which may be respectively stated as

(a)the theory of degradation;

(b)the theory of exultation, and

(c)the theory of incongruity.

Thomas Hobbes' theory belongs to the first category. According to it we experience a comic feeling of sudden glory or triumph for ourselves when we take down somebody or see somebody taken down from his generally accepted position of glory. It is a relative feeling arising out of the unexpectedly observed contrast between a man's supposed dignity and his real weakness, or between what is required of him and what he actually does.

McDougall's theory may be taken to belong to the second category. According to it comic laughter is nature's antidote to misplaced and exaggerated sympathy. It is true that without mutual sympathy man's social existence would have been impossible. But this is equally true that an unmitigated and too excessive 'sympathy' would have spread around the contagion of depressing gloom and thus made man's social life equally debilitated. Therefore, against this too pronounced sympathetic tendency Nature has implanted in us a distinct instinct of

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laughter which is set in motion whenever we find someone in mild distress or discomfiture which should not be of such a degree as to call for any active sympathy or practical help. This comic feeling helps us see our so-called misfortunes in the right perspective and thus delivers our mind from depressing thoughts.

Now the third category of theories, the theory of incongruity, holds that any incongruity or inconsistency in human speech, dress, action, behaviour, etc., blows up the lid from the assumed gravity of the whole affair and makes us laugh out because of the release from habitual tension and tautness.

What is of crucial importance for the production of the comic feeling is the fact that the degradation or the incongruity or their combination should be slight and really harmless, for, otherwise, some other contrary feeling such as anger, irritation or pity may be excited and the nascent comic feeling completely submerged and supplanted.

Another interesting point to note in this connection is the fact that both the comic and the sublime are relative feelings arising out of a distinct perception of contrast. But this contrast has "opposite effects in the two cases; in the former, the object is belittled, while we feel momentarily triumphant; in the latter, the greatness of the object is magnified, while we feel small before it. Consequently, while in the one case we have a feeling of joy and exaltation, in the other we have a feeling of awe and humility.""

IV. Humour: Its Ascending Evolution

The humorous impulse in man has passed through many stages of upward development, at the bottom of which are the guffaws and malice and primitive fun, and at the top are smiles and tears and refined reflection. Prof. Stephen Leacock has made a profound study of this subject in his charming opuscule Humour and Humanity. What follows below is an abridged adaptation of his valuable observations.

Both the sense of humour and the expression of it have

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undergone in the course of history an upward and continuous progress. Humour meant exultation, the sense of personal triumph over one's adversary, or the sense of impish delight in seeing something — anything — demolished or knocked out of shape. But humour has been undergoing a refining process. The 'exultation' must somehow keep away the reality of harm and arise as it were out of the mere appearance of it. Humour, in other words, has changed from the basis of injury or destruction, to what may be described as a basis of pleasant 'incongruity' or 'maladjustment'. Malice has given place to human kindliness.

In course of its progressive development humour has followed in different hands two opposite streams: negative and positive, destructive and constructive. The movement of the humorous impulse or the expression of the humorous idea has not, alas, been in all cases consistently inspired by understanding sympathy and human kindliness. In one direction have flowed "the polluted waters of mockery and sarcasm, the infliction of psychological pain as a perverted source of pleasure"; along this line are found the impish malice, the sneer of the scoffer, and the snarl of the literary critic as opposed to the kindly tolerance of the true humorist.

In the other direction has flowed, "clear and undefiled", the humour of human kindliness, unpolluted by the malicious counterpart. "Humour goes upon its way, moving from lower to higher forms, from cruelty to horseplay, from horseplay to wit, from wit to the higher humour of character and beyond that to its highest stage as the humour of life itself. Here tears and laughter are joined, and our little life, incongruous and vain, is rounded with a smile."¹² Humour attains its consummated stage when it broadens its outlook and becomes one with pathos and reflection. Then one realises that "the humourous conception and the serious conception are just the two Janus faces of the same truth."¹³

We are here reminded of Nirodbaran's pregnant remark visa-vis Sri Aurobindo's humour. Let it not be forgotten that NB lived in close physical proximity to Sri Aurobindo for a long

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period of twelve years. He has observed: "Sri Aurobindo's jokes were never really trivial; they could be playful but always had an intellectual element in them."¹⁴

Before we close this section on the evolution of humour we may refer, in the barest possible outlines, to a few of the specialised forms through which the humorous impulse of man has sought its verbal expression.

A 'joke' is an item of humour reduced to a single point or particle. It represents the breaking up of the humorous matter into its elements or components so that we can examine and appreciate one little bit of it at a time.

'Satire' has for its aim not merely to amuse but to make amusement a vehicle of purpose. Satire may possibly be of many different kinds and used for many different purposes.

'Wit' is an expression of humour involving an unexpected and ingenious play upon words. A quickness of dual perception is essential to the production of wit. Humour may very often be merely playful, but a wit is frequently weighted with some interest. This interest may often be either to wound or to convey a reproach or snub or criticism.

Wit may be of a lower negative variety or it may be of a higher positive kind. Here are two examples of wit, one each of the two categories. (These have been taken from Walter Jerrold's A Book of Famous Wits.)

Ex. 1: An affected young man was dining with an Yorkshire family. When the hostess ordered the servant to remove the "fool", meaning the fowl, the young man sought to correct the lady's pronunciation by saying: "I presume you mean the fowl, madam." "Very well," responded the annoyed Yorkshirewoman, "take away the fowl and let the fool remain."¹⁵ Ex. 2: At a dinner of artists and literary men, a poet wittily proposed the toast of "The painters and glaziers of Great Britain!" coupling it with the name of a famous artist. The toast having been duly honoured, the artist returned thanks. It was now his turn to propose a toast and he neatly retaliated on the

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poet by coupling his name with a further toast "The British paper stainers!"¹⁶

This was the happy give-and-take of an intelligent witty exchange.

V. Basic Principles and Devices

In spite of E.B. White's injunction that humour should not be dissected, many a scholar has tried to analyse the phenomenon of humour in order to disengage its basic canons and principles, also how a humorous effect is successfully produced by the artists of humour. The scholars' analysis has revealed the fact that a successful humorist, while bringing together a certain combination of words, phrases, ideas, phenomena, fancies, actualities or accidents, must somehow bring to light (i) certain pleasing contrasts, discrepancies and incongruities, or (ii) an unexpectedly occurring discomfiture of others, moderated by the relieving sense that it does not cause any serious hurt or damage.

Now this may be done and the required humorous effect produced by adopting any one of a number of literary devices which may collectively be called the "rhetoric of humour". Some of these 'tricks of the trade' may be formulated as follows:

(1) Exaggeration or overstatement; (2) Understatement; (3) Distortion; (4) Surprise; (5) Faulty logic; (6) Violation of the laws of logical thinking; (7) Unexpected logic; (8) Unexpected truth; (9) Reductio ad absurdum; (10) Hypocrisy; (11) Deception; (12) Disguise; (13) Witty cynicism; (14) Disparaging comparison or contrast; (15) Verbal irony; (16) Dramatic irony; (17) Witty insults; (18) Unmasking; (19) Pose of ignorance; (20) Vanity; (21) Violation of a taboo; (22) Small misfortunes; (23) Discomfiture; (24) Ingenious twists; (25) Twisting of cliches; (26) Paradox; (27) Pun; (28) Parody; (29) Frustrated expectation; (30) Unexpected fulfilment; (31) Sudden juxtaposition of impossibilities; (32) Incongruous juxtaposition of

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ideas; (33) Rule ingeniously broken; (34) Coining unexpected definitions; (35) Outwitting; (36) Intentional violation of the common or proper use of words; (37) Intentionally made false statements; (38) Expressing a blunt truth when the conventional is expected; (39) Pungently stating a belief widely held but rarely expressed; (40) Expressing an original idea; (41) Contradicting well-known facts; (42) Rationalisations as if they were true motives; (43) Treating the imaginary or the impossible as the real, and the trivial as the important; (44) Playful violation of anything customary; and so on and so forth. For, given human inventiveness the name of these literary contrivances is simply Legion.

But it goes without saying that a formal employment of any of the devices mentioned above will not automatically produce a humorous effect. If it would have done so, we would not have referred to humour as an art. Something more, something almost intangible, is needed on the part of the writer before he can qualify as a genuine writer of humour.

VI. Abilities Required

To write humour is a difficult art. In improper hands it may degenerate into something "as dull and respectable as philology or epistemology!"¹⁷ Also, the humour should not be overdone nor should it be blunt and crude. There should be great subtlety in the expression of humour and this subtlety should not be explicitly elaborated.

There are subtle undertones lying just beneath or around the words we use; these undertones have to be cleverly exploited as potent devices for creating the requisite humorous effect. Thus, to produce the right kind of happy humour, the writer must possess a keen sense of individual words and phrases and an adequate understanding of the sequence of the constitutive senses, and use them naturally, almost inevitably, so much so that if one seeks to alter any of the words or the phrases, the quality and/or the effect of the humour will come down by a few leagues.

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We may succinctly state that a qualitatively successful humorous writing demands on the part of the author

(1)a very exact knowledge of the value of the words, of the mots propres;

(2)a knowledge of how to use the right word at the right place;

(3)a knowledge of using the wrong word at the right place;

(4)a knowledge of using the right word in the wrong place;

(5)the capacity for choosing the right word, the inevitable word;

(6)the ability to bring about an unexpected matching of words and their senses, giving rise to a shock of humour;

(7)a great naturalness of language, avoiding scrupulously all straining after producing the effect;

(8)a proper awareness of the emotive meanings of the words used, as distinct from their literal dictionary referents;

(9)a knowledge of the proper shades of meaning of apparently synonymous words and a dexterity in using them ingeniously with a view to creating a pleasant and surprising shock of humour; and lastly,

(10)metaphors being the very life of humour, an ability to extend the use of a given word to a new situation where it fits in with surprising aptness.

This last requisite, - the ability to compare by similes, metaphors and subtle implications, - proves a peerless asset in the hands of an accomplished humorist. As Prof. Leacock has observed in connection with Charles Dickens' writings:

"Such comparisons were characteristic of Dickens and all his work. He was for ever comparing everything with everything else: and, above all, in this way endowing inanimate objects with life and movement; for him windows grin, doors yawn, clocks wink solemnly and trees talk in the night breeze. The fancies of Barnaby Rudge watching the clothes dance upon the clothesline are those of his creator."¹⁸

Let us call a halt now to our abstruse theoretical discussion and pass on to the citing of concrete examples. For, mere theory or abstract formulation of principles and devices will not be

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able to carry conviction to us as regards what actually produces the comic effect and how this humorous effect is linguistically evoked. One right example will speak much more than a shipload of analytical verbiage. Hence we now proceed to the task of demonstrating our principles with a sufficiently large number of examples of good humour collected from the writings of celebrated humorists. These will show in ample measure the essence of various literary techniques employed by the masters of the art that is humour. A very short introductory delineation followed by one or two illustrative examples is all that we propose to offer for each of the devices referred to. We shall refrain from any detailed analysis and our readers are invited to sharpen their sense of humour in order to perceive in each case where the humour lies and which principle or principles this particular example of humour illustrates. A much greater reflection on the part of the readers will reward them, we hope, with more of amusing revelation and enjoyment.

One last word. Let us not forget that humour can be expressed through different mediums such as (i) words and phrases taken in themselves, (ii) ideas, (iii) situation, (iv) character, (v) narration, etc. Of course, in all the cases of linguistically expressed humour, words and phrases are bound to form an essential part. But the striking fact is that just as there can be humour got out of mere words, i.e., out of the incongruities found in the manipulation of the words themselves without any supporting aid of humour of ideas, so also there may be pure ideational humour where the words or phrases do not play any significant role so far as the element of incongruity is concerned.

Thus we have the cases of purely verbal humour side by side with those of pure ideational humour. And of course we have the third, mixed class — and this is by far the most common case - where humour of ideas joins hands with humour of words. The following examples will illustrate what we mean.

Example 1 (Purely verbal humour):

"A peer appears upon the pier, who blind still goes to sea."¹⁹

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Example 2 {Pure humour of ideas):

"Here were four old fellows, all more or less deaf, sitting round out of doors, each busy with some little occupation of whittling or fixing tackle or something. One calls across to one of the others, in quite a loud voice with his hand to his ear: 'How would you like to go fishing to-day?' The other deaf man with the same gesture but even a little louder answers back: T can't, because I'm going fishing!' "²⁰

Example 3 (Verbal and ideational blended):

A white gentleman had married a coloured lady merely because of her wealth but did not get on well with her. On having come to know of this the great clerical wit Canon Ainger remarked: "It seems a pity that he should quarrel with his bread and butter - even though it is brown."²¹

How delectable is the subtle play on 'bread and butter' and its 'brown' colour!

Example 4 (again, verbal and ideational combined):

"At a city banquet someone asked if the word 'reforme' should not have an e at the end of it in a French menu.

'Yes,' said Dean Mansel, with great readiness, 'reform in France is always followed by an e mute.' "²²

An example of very subtle and very happy wit. Dear readers, do you comprehend it all right? The play is on the different meanings of the two homophonous French expressions 'e mute' (silent e) and 'emeute' (an uprising).

In all the examples we list below, to whichever class they may individually belong, readers will find on keen observation that all of them, in some way or other, embody an element of (i) ingenuity, or (ii) incongruity, or (iii) unexpected discovery, or (iv) sudden 'exaltation'. Now with the examples.

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VII. Humour of Words

1.Repetition:

(i)Such nicknames as "Jo-Jo" or "Poppo-Poppo".

(ii)Such combinations as "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-eh" or "The Walla-Walla Wahoo, Walla-Walla, Wash".

(iii)Sri Aurobindo's 'curative mantra' (!) given to NB for his

boil:

"Tut nut tut nut tut tut!"

2.Rhythm:

Sometimes a set of syllables rapidly following each other becomes so smooth and rhythmical that we can't at first understand what they mean. This succession of syllables sets up thus an incongruity between the smooth flow of speech and the fact of unintelligibility. The French language lends itself especially to this sort of overrhythm.

Examples: (i) "She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore"

(ii) In French: "Didon dina dit-on du dos d'un dodu dindon."²³

3.Alliteration:

Elementary examples: (i) "Let's have a ship-shape shop."

(ii)"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."

(iii)In French: "A qui sont ces saucis-sons-ci et a qui sont ces saucissons-ld?"²⁴

American newspaper headings: (i) "Vandal Vamps" (instead of "Criminal escapes")

(ii) "Dangerous Desperado Disappears"

Here, in such alliterative combinations, there is evidently some incongruity of language, a piece of 'fun with words'.

An advanced example: In a clerical company the conversation had turned upon the then head of the Church. Dr. Samuel

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Parr, a clergyman himself, listened for some time to the strictures of his companions, then called in 'apt alliteration's artful aid' and broke in with:

"Gentlemen, he is a poor paltry prelate, proud of petty popularity, and perpetually preaching to petticoats."²⁵

4.Anagram:

An anagram is a rearrangement of the letters in a given word to produce another, thus leading to an incongruous confusion.

Example: The doctor advised a patient to add lemon as a regular item to his daily diet, for his body required a supply of citric acid and lemon contains that in plenty. While coming back home he got somewhat confused about what the doctor had prescribed as the new item of diet. He came to his place and solemnly addressed his wife: "From now on please give me a water melon along with my breakfast."

'Melon' had in his mind replaced the original word 'lemon'.

5.Ambiguity:

An ambiguity is the use of a word or phrase having two meanings. This provides numerous jokes, whether accidentally made or deliberately contrived.

Example: Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) may be regarded as the most notable wit of his generation. His neat retorts and happy sayings earned him a name.

One day, after a dinner party, Gilbert was standing in the hall waiting for a friend to join him when a short-sighted old gentleman, mistaking him for one- of the servants, ordered: "Call me a cab!"

Gilbert looked him up and down, and then quietly observed: "Ah, you're a four-wheeler!"

The old gentleman turned on him wrathfully, "How dare you, sir? What do you mean?"

"Well," retorted Gilbert, "you asked me to call you a cab -and surely I couldn't call you 'hansom'."²⁶

(The joke is of course based on the two different significances of the verb 'to call': (i) to demand presence of, and (ii) to name or to describe as.)

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6.Pun (Paronomasia):

A pun is an ingenious type of play upon words, which can arise whenever there is a double sense to a single or similar sound. It is often used as a device for jokes and riddles. We shall talk a great deal about puns later in this chapter.

Example: James Kenneth Stephen, the author of 'Lapsus Calamf, is reputed to have made the neat remark:

"It has been said that heaven lies about us in our infancy -but that is no reason why we should lie about heaven in our old age."²⁷

7.Circumlocution (Periphrasis):

Circumlocution is the expression in a roundabout way of something which could be very well said in a much simpler manner.

Example: "He brought his enfolded hand into abrupt juxtaposition with his rival's olfactory organ", meaning thereby "He punched his rival on the nose."²⁸

8.Spoonerism:

A spoonerism is a fun with words we chance upon when the initials of words are mutually transposed in a sentence.

Example: Someone said: "I have a half-warmed fish in my mind", when he actually wanted to say "I have a half-formed wish in my mind."²⁹

9.Metathesis:

A metathesis is the transposition and recombination of letters within a single word.

Example: Someone reported that "The young girl's hair was decked with robins" when he wanted to convey that "Her hair was decked with ribbons."'⁰

10.Syllepsis:

The phenomenon of syllepsis arises when we employ in our sentence-construction a single word to refer to two items grammatically but rather incongruously.

Example: "She was serving soup to us with a ladle and a scowl."³¹

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11.Anticlimax (Bathos):

An anticlimax is the listing of things in such a way as to make the trivial appear last, thus producing a ludicrous effect due to the humorous shock of sudden frustration of an expectation.

Example: The poet Pope wrote in his The Rape of the Lock:

"Here thou, great Anna,

whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take,

and sometimes tea."

12.A portmanteau word:

A portmanteau word is a fictitious word created, usually with humorous intent, by blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others.

Examples: (i) 'motel' for 'motor' + 'hotel'.

(ii) 'Oxbridge' for Oxford + Cambridge. ("You are doing something against Oxbridge tradition.")

13.Palindrome:

A palindrome is an ingenious succession of words such that, read from left to right or from right to left, the sound and the sense remain the same.

Example 1: "Madam, I'm Adam."

Example 2: A man, a plan, a canal - Panama!

Example 3: Here is a palindrome of seven words supposed to have been uttered by Napoleon. He was, as we know, first exiled to the isle of Elba before he was finally banished to the island of St. Helena.

During his reminiscent spells at St. Helena, Napoleon is supposed to have said to his British attendant there: "Able was I ere I saw Elba."³²

14.Ingenuity:

The appreciation of ingenuity and the sense of amusement lie close together; for an ingenious innovation sets up an

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incongruity which makes us laugh.

Example: This is from Amal Kiran's Talks on Poetry:

"We went up a lift from floor to floor. The first floor was so large that — if my memory is correct — four restaurants, each bigger than our Ganpatram's, were situated on it - an English restaurant, a French, a German, an Italian, each with its own national edition of our laughing and welcoming Ganpatram, a Mister Ganpatram, a Monsieur Gannepatramme, a Herr Gaunpautraum, a Signor Ganpatramo.""

15.Malapropism:

An erroneous word-usage is called 'malapropism'. The word has come from Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop, a character in his play The Rivals, who had the tendency to use words in wrong senses.

A malapropism in a given context may be either unintentional or intentional, giving rise to humorous effect all the same. It may also happen that a gifted writer of humour may slightly alter, in a deliberate way, the form or the usage of a given word and thus impart to it an altogether new and ingenious implication.

Examples: (i) "Illiterate him from your memory" (instead of "obliterate").

(ii)"He was as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile" (instead of "an alligator").

(iii)"She is having a historical fit" (instead of "hysterical").

(iv)To call the "feudal system" a 'futile system' or even a 'fuddle system'.

16.Twisted word-usage:

Just as a legitimately used pun possesses a genuine second meaning, a humorist can impart an artificially created second meaning to a word or phrase by slightly twisting it.

Example: "Base Ball World Series" referred to as the "Voild's Serious". Here are the relevant observations of Prof. Leacock:

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"The annual Base Ball World Series is, or ought to be, the last word in care-free amusement. But mentioned with a Yiddish touch, as the 'Voild's Serious', the implication is as entertaining as it is obvious."³⁴

17. Humour of neologisms:

17a. Analogical condensation:

Examples: The fish called a 'chub' is also called a 'chaven-der'. Then why not call a 'pub' by the second name of 'pavender'? Or, in the reverse order, why not give 'lavender' a new name 'lub'?³'

17b. 'Mutilated' words:

At times an artist of humour may chop off a part of a word, either the head or the tail, and use the residual part alone to convey the original sense. It thus 'saves time and makes rhyme'. This device has been called "Poetical Economy" by Harry Graham.

Example:

"When I've a syllable de trop,

I cut it off without apol:

This verbal sacrifice, I know,

May irritate the schol.

But all must praise my devilish cunn,

Who realise that Time is mon."³⁶

17c. Telescopic words:

Words may be condensed and recombined in various ways to produce a humorous effect. One cannot but recall in this connection Lewis Carrol's 'brillig' which meant 'brilliant twilight', or 'galumping' which is a compound of 'galloping' and 'leaping', and the ingenious name 'Rilchiam' to combine 'Richard and William'.

Example 1: "Lord North's daughter - Lady Charlotte Lindsay - arriving late for dinner at Holland House apologized to her hostess saying, T am exceedingly sorry, but really the

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roads are so macadamnable!' ""

Example 2: Tensing and Hillary were the first climbers to conquer the Mount Everest. But who amongst the two was actually the first to put his foot on those summit snows? As a matter of fact, that is of no real importance. For "it was not possible for the two sole conquerors to reach the summit gaily together arm-in-arm: they could pant and gasp up to it only on a rope one behind the other and the slightest personal competition would have sent them crashing to an Ever-rest below. The two, thus bound, were really equal to one man.... So, truly speaking, we should hold that not Hillary or Tensing but Hillsing climbed up there and felt the hill sing his triumph."³⁸

18.Ingenious spelling:

These new forms of deliberately adopted 'bad' spellings are mostly used in advertisements to attract attention of the customers by amusing them.

Examples: (i) Fit-rite clothes (for 'Fit right').

(ii)Nite restaurants (instead of 'Night').

(iii)Uneeda biscuits and much else are sold here (for 'You need').

(iv)Waukenphast boots (for 'Walking fast').

(v)Phiteasi garment (instead of 'Fit easy').

19.Incongrous grafting:

Example: "In the seventeenth century an English scholar of Italian - a man named Pinkerton - felt so keenly the lack of dignity in English as compared to Italian that he made the proposal that English words should be provided with Italian endings and thus rendered more aristocratic. The idea did not catch on".... De Quincey summed up very tellingly the failure of Pinkerton's Italianising fantasy:

"Luckilissime this proposalio of the absurdissimo Pinker-tonio was not adoptado by anybodyini whateverano.' "³⁹

20.Use of uncommon or pedantic words:

Example: Use of the archaic word "honorificabilitudinity"

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for the more common "honorableness". By the way, there is an interesting story behind this word. Let us attend to Amal Kiran's narration:

"Some Baconians have traced in the works of Shakespeare various hidden messages, several declarations of Bacon's authorship put in the form of ciphers....The shortest of all cryptograms ... is evolved directly from a word occurring in Shakespeare. The word is "honorificabilitudinitatibus". In Love's Labour Lost, Act V, Scene 1, you will find this verbal whale....It is the semi-jocular form of a word which actually exists in English, though it is archaic now: "honorificabilitudinity". The semi-jocular form comes from the ablative plural of the Latin original of the English term.... By the way, among polysyllabic English words, the longest is "honorificabilitudinity" - twenty-two letters.

"The form used by Shakespeare has been pounced upon by the Baconians and they have juggled out of its twenty-seven letters a variety of Latin sentences, the most plausible of which is: "Hi ludi orbituiti F. Baconis nati." The sentence translates: "These plays preserved for the world (are) born of F. Bacon." The Shakespearians are expected to be impressed into dumbfounded defeat."⁴⁰

21. Humour with initials and acronyms:

Example 1: This is from the poet-critic K.D. Sethna lecturing to the students of his class on Poetry:

"Here is a surprising image evoked by the poet Eliot:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table ...

"It almost sounds like one surgeon egging another on to take advantage jointly of a wonderfully opportune situation in Nature. To operate on an anaesthetized evening! By Hippocrates, that's a thing few F.R.C.S.'s - Fellows of the Royal

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College of Surgeons - could hope to do, unless the sky falls and overwhelms them with grace.

"But leaving aside acknowledged F.R.C.S.'s we may ask whether Eliot has produced here a true poetic image that could please this unconventional F.R.C.S. before you - this Fellow Researching in Comparisons and .Symbols or if you want to generalise, this Fellow Roaring to Cute Students. At once we have to admit that the image is extraordinary."⁴¹

Example 2: Modern high-tech War acronyms sound quite often so mystifying and so funny at the same time! Here are a few examples with their hidden meanings added within brackets.

( i) Snafu - (Situation normal, all fouled up.)

(ii)Slam - (Stand-off land attack missile)

(iii)"Cas jets with Awacs and Flir fire arm at triple-a and Sam." - ("Fighter jet pilots fly 'Control Air Support' missions, along with 'Airborne Warning and Control System' aircraft, using all-weather night-vision 'Forward Looking Infrared' system and fire radar-busting high radiation 'Anti-radar Missiles' at an opposing force's 'Anti-aircraft Artillery' and 'Surface to Air Missile' defences.")

(iv)Art - (Airborne radar technician)

(v)"Bda is done by both pilot and Gib" - ("Battle damage assessment is done by both the pilot and the guy in the backseat.")

(vi)"Troops ride humvees as per Dod." - ("Troops ride 'High mobility multi-wheeled vehicles' as per U.S. 'Department of Defence'.")⁴²

22. Humour of ellipsis:

Ellipsis is the omission from a sentence of words needed to complete construction or sense. Now this sort of ellipse occurs at times unintentionally or is taken recourse to deliberately, in order to produce a pleasantly incongruous effect.

Example: "How are you, I hope?" (instead of "How are you? I hope you are keeping well?") Here is how our inimitable Amal Kir an describes the situation:

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"Early this morning I ran across one of our students, who had been absent last time. I naturally said, 'How are you keeping?' It was a minute later that I thought I should have put the question in the typical South-Indian way. In South India many English-fancying people fuse several phrases into one and ask: 'How are you, I hope?' And the general answer is: 'Somewhat, I am afraid.' Don't ask me to explain these compact sentences. But surely I can appreciate their piquancy."⁴³

All language becomes 'funny' when its employment is patently wrong or even felt to be wrong. There are many ways a humorous effect may be produced by the appropriate use or 'mis'-use of words. Here are a few illustrative cases.

VIII. Humour of 'Mis'-Use of Words

Case 1: Wrong word rightly used:

This is the use of a word obviously wrong for its sense but so aptly used for the occasion. And it produces the desired effect.

Example: Mr. Ballou's friend, in Mark Twain's Western book Roughing It, complains sorrowfully: "Ballou has abused me by calling me a logarithm; it has hurt me a good deal."

Prof. Leacock comments on the above: "One might search the whole dictionary and find nothing to equal 'logarithm'."⁴⁴

Case 2: Right wbrd 'wrongly' used:

This is the reverse case, the case of a right word for the sense but the context in which it is used proves rather odd.

Example : The delectable poem "Lawyer's Lullaby" begins:

"Be still my child, remain in status quo,

While father rocks the cradle to and fro."⁴⁵

Case 3: Apparently nonsensical expression hut so apt for the purpose!

Example: "You are a 'no doubt'!" ... We call again our

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friend Amal Kiran on the stage. Let us listen to him narrating the story behind this peerless 'no doubt':

"Once at a railway station a chap was trying to enter a crowded third-class carriage. He had all sorts of bundles under his arms and an umbrella slung over his shoulder and there dangled from one hand a cage with a parrot in it. Somebody who had secured a place near the carriage entrance tried to dissuade him from inflicting such an assortment of luggage plus himself on the already bursting compartment.

"The man with the parrot-cage got indignant and exclaimed: "You think you are a who?" Immediately the other fellow retorted: "Well, if I am a who, then you are a no doubt!" I am sure the squabblers understood each other and we can also intuit the drift of their squabble. Perhaps some day these delicious Indianisms will get into the English Language."⁴⁶

Case 4: 'Irish bull:

This is the case of the right use of the words to convey the right sense but somehow if the words are scanned too literally for their meanings, the new meanings extracted become totally incongruous.

Example 1: "Indeed, miss," said the Irish usher of a Dublin theatre, "I'd like to give you a seat but the empty ones are all full."

The 'empty ones' are 'full'? What an absurdity! Yet the meaning is clear.⁴⁷

Example 2: An Irish doctor sent in his professional account to a lady with the heading - "For curing your husband till he died".

What sort of 'curing' it was if the man 'died'! Yet what the doctor sought to convey through his formulation is crystal clear to us.⁴⁸

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IX. Puns

Of all mere verbal devices the one that has stood supreme through the ages is the pun or paronomasia. By pun we mean the use of a word or phrase which has two distinctly separate meanings that the context brings into a glaring incongruity. Viewed from one angle a pun is obviously a scholarly thing; for, a penetrating knowledge of language coupled with an instantaneous sense of dual perception alone can enable one either to produce or even to apprehend a high-class pun. For example, take the celebrated joke or musing made by Pope Gregory when he saw some handsome English slaves at a Rome market: "Now Angli sed angeli". The pun of 'Angli' and 'angeli' cannot be properly appreciated without a knowledge of Latin declensions. In English translation it roughly means: "Not Angles but angels."

In extended connotation a pun, as a play on words, may signify either (i) a use of the same word to suggest different meanings, or (ii) a use of different words with different meanings but possessing the same or similar sound. Here are two simple examples of the two types:

Example 1: A play on the verb 'to draw':

"A man directing Archbishop Whateley's attention to a powerful draught horse expatiated on its great strength saying, 'There is nothing which he cannot draw.'

'H'm!' said Whateley musingly; 'Can he draw an inference?' "⁴⁹

Example 2: A play on the homophones 'red' and 'read':

Here is Hilaire Belloc's epitaph for himself:

When I am gone, let this of me be said:

"His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."⁵⁰

This is, of course, an excellent pun. But in improper hands a pun may degenerate into what Holmes has designated as 'a laughable verbicide'. This latter sort of cheap pun has been

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"roundly and soundly execrated"; for it has no other point to it than just the similarity of sounds. The mere punster is all the time seeking to wrestle with and twist words to give them a semblance of similarity of sound. Such word-twisting has neither any genuine wit nor humour though its very far-fetchedness has in it something of the ludicrous.

This mania of producing puns "easily runs to a sort of mental degeneration in which the unhappy victim tries to make puns all the time, hears only sounds and not ideas, his mind as vacant as a bell waiting for its clapper. ... Many people hate puns because of such punsters."⁵¹

Here are a few examples of cheap 'execrable' puns.

Example 1: "He went and told the sexton, and the sexton tolled the bell."

Example 2: "O Mother Almighty, I have finished all my tea."

Example 3: "this, then, is all my knack you see, An almanack I've been."

Because of such tendency to word-torturing, puns often fall into disrepute. We recall in this connection the highly witty assertion of Prof. Stephen Leacock:

" 'He who would make a pun would pick a pocket', Dr. Johnson is said to have said but didn't say, or didn't say first."⁵²

But puns need not be as bad as that. Handled by a veritable artist of humour a pun may exhibit different kinds of saving graces. The first of these is ingenuity. The combination of words may be so ingeniously made that the very ingenuity evokes in us a sense of pure mirth. Here is an example often quoted in defence of a genuine pun.

Example: There is a heroic poem by Thomas Campbell on the battle of Hohenlinden (A.D. 1800), which caught the attention of the English world of that day and which began:

On Linden when the sun was low,

All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,

And dark as winter was the flow

Of Iser rolling rapidly.

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Now Campbell took his poem on the battle of Hohenlinden to a publisher. After handing the piece to the publisher, Campbell whose head was still humming with poetry stepped out to the stairs but missed his footing and fell with a great deal of clatter down the stairway. The publisher, hearing the noise, put his head out of his door at the top of the landing and asked: "What's happening?" To which the falling poet shouted back in the midst of his tumble: "I, sir, rolling rapidly.""

"I, sir, rolling rapidly" - this is a felicitous pun of ingenuity. It does not carry however any deeper intent or any humour of idea with it. But very often a pun may have a much higher saving grace than mere ingenuity. It may, in that case, become a subtle way of saying something with much greater point than a plain matter-of-fact statement. As Prof. Leacock has observed, a right kind of pun "often enables us to say with delicacy things which would never do if said outright. ... Pun is a form of polite satire where direct attack would be uncivil and displeasing."⁵⁴

Example: The Rev. Sydney Smith said to his fellow-canons of St. Paul's Cathedral who were animatedly discussing the question of a wooden side-walk round the edifice:

"Come, gentlemen, lay your heads together and the thing is done."

Please note how the pun is hidden in the couples of meanings possessed by each of the expressions 'lay your heads together' and 'wooden'! Prof. Leacock's remarks are worth quoting here: "If Dr. Sydney Smith had said, 'Gentlemen, you canons are a wooden-headed interminable lot of bores*' it would convey the same truth but with an unpermissible directness."'⁵

Therefore the true pun needs defence no more than any other work of art. It cannot arise out of a mere word-twisting. Its source is in the ready perception of the diverse significances of words, and it may often be "the feather of the arrow on which is carried the point of wit."⁵⁶

Let me end this eulogy of puns by quoting a famous

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exclamation of Charles Lamb - "the immortal Elia, one of the most engagingly delightful of our humorists". A pun was to him a thing of true art and he, in its use, was something of a true artist. He once remarked:

"May my last breath be drawn through a pipe and exhaled in a pun."

PUNS OF VARIOUS KINDS

1.Lowly pun or the "pun obvious":

Example 1: The Virgin Queen Elizabeth's supposed remark: "Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh, but ye make less stir than the Earl of Leicester."⁵⁷

Example 2: When after the election of 1892 the Liberal Party was returned to power in England with a majority of forty-two, Canon Ainger remarked: "The G.O.M. will try to bear his moderate majority with forty-twod."⁵⁸

Example 3: Edward Lear, author of "The Book of Nonsense", wrote in a letter to one of his friends: "As for me I am 40 - and some months; by the time I am 42 I shall regard the matter with 42de I hope."⁵⁹

2.Excellent pun:

Example 1: (A play on the word 'habit'): Burke's great rival, Charles James Fox, was no mean master of the retort. Once, asked by a friend to explain the meaning of the passage in the Psalms, 'He clothed himself with cursing, like as with a garment,' Fox answered with a pun: "The meaning, I think, is clear enough - the man had a habit of swearing.'⁶⁰

Example 2: (play on the phrases "tender made" and "tender maid"): An old lady was brought forward as a witness to prove a certain tender having been made. Joseph Jekyll, whose wit excelled in making impromptu epigrams, remarked:

"Garrow, forbear! that tough old jade

Can never prove a tender maid."⁶¹

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Example 3: (A deep play on the word "perfection", also on "to bring to"):

A lady showing Sydney Smith round her garden pointed out some plant saying, "Isn't it a pity I cannot bring this flower to perfection?"

"Let me, then," said the ready canon, taking her hand, "bring perfection to the flower."⁶²

Example 4: Being told that Henry Holl had left the stage and set up as a wine merchant, Douglas Jerrold, the great conversational wit, commented: "Oh yes, and I'm told that his wine off the stage is better than his whine on it."⁶'

Example 5: (Play on "can, sir" and "Cancer"):

Challenged by a friend to make a pun on any given subject, Jerrold, the ready wit, engaged to do so. The friend considered a moment and then said: "Well, I'm sure you can't pun on the Zodiac." "By Gemini, I Can-cer," came the prompt reply.⁶⁴

3.Pun conundrum:

Richard Whately, one of the wittiest of divines, devised the following ingenious conundrum based on clever punning:

Q. "Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert?"

A. "Because he can eat the sand which is there."

Q. "But what brought the sandwiches there?"

A. "Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.'"'⁵

4.'Logical' pun:

The logicians call this 'The fallacy of accent'. This fallacy is committed whenever a second unintended or intended meaning is conveyed by misplaced accent in speech or writing. Careless or slurred pronunciation may wittingly or unwittingly generate the fallacy of accent. Here are two funny examples.

Example 1: "F.C.S. Schiller tells us in his Formal Logic that he once heard an audience of philosophers solemnly accept as an authentic quotation from William James the reading 'If you are radically tender, you will take up with the Mormonistic form

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of philosophy'. James, of course, had only said, 'more monistic.'⁶⁶

Example 2: "Another writer confesses that through the years of his childhood he had cherished a silent devotion to a mystic, supernatural animal, holy though afflicted, which his Church choir sang about nearly every Sunday. The animal so celebrated was 'The Consecrated Cross-Eyed Bear.' Alas for the illusion of childhood! It turned out that the choir was singing only about 'the consecrated Cross I'd bear.' "⁶⁷

5. Pun as a device for much in little:

A pun may present neatly in a nutshell what could only otherwise be expressed in a roundabout fashion. Here is what G.K. Chesterton has written apropos of this characteristic of a true pun:

"When we come to the great puns of Hood or of any other writer, we note first of all this use of the pun in sharpening and clinching a thought. Suppose that Hood, writing a journalistic report of one of the last duels, had written: 'Both principals fired in the air; and we cannot too strongly express our hope that those who think it incumbent on them to use this old form of self-vindication may imitate such a sensible and humane interpretation of it.'

"That is sound enough; but it is a little laborious, and does not express either the detachment or the decision of such a critic of duelling. Hood, as a fact, did write:

'So each one upwards in the air

His shot he did expend.

And may all other duels have

That upshot at the end.'

"Here the verbal pun [on the word 'up-shot'], falling so ridiculously right, does express not merely the humanity of the critic, but also his humorous impartiality and unruffled readiness of intellect."⁶⁸

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6. 'Ideational' pun:

In these cases the starting point is a simple verbal pun followed by a detailed humour of ideas.

Example: (Play on the two different senses of the word 'foot'):

Amal Kiran is addressing his students in his class on Poetry:

"Metre is a system of rhythmic units composed of stressed or unstressed syllables and called feet. There are various kinds of feet - the most frequendy used being iambs, trochees, spondees, pyrrhics, anapaests, dactyls. I shall not deal with all their details just now. I shall merely say that a spondee has two syllables that are equally stressed and an anapaest has three syllables the first two of which have no stress and are termed slacks while the third bears a stress.

"I pick out these metrical units because they are relevant to my remark that we cannot be quite the same in metre. The metre of all of you may be said to be spondaic: your feet fall with equal stress on the ground. Mine do not on account of a limp in one of them. And I use a stick to help me walk better. So my metre is two slacks and one stress. I am an anapaestic fellow. Yes, we have to differ in metrical movement."⁶⁹

X. Humour of Ideas

(PURE OR WITH VERBAL DEVICE)

Humour at a higher level may use ideas as an expressive medium. In such a case, instead of relying on the verbal devices of contrasts, incongruities and conflicts of words as such, it seeks to express itself through the juxtaposition of incongruous ideas. Naturally the two, the verbal humour on one side and the 'ideational' humour on the other, run very close together. In other words, as Prof. Stephen Leacock has pointed out, "the humour of words is ancillary and auxiliary to the humour of ideas. But the humour of incongruous ideas may be expressed,

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and often is, without any special departures in the use of the single words."⁷⁰

We have already given on page 34 examples of (i) pure verbal humour, (ii) pure humour of ideas, and (iii) mixed verbal-and-ideational humour. In this Section X of the present chapter we would like to cite many more classic examples of humour of ideas - both of the pure and of the mixed varieties -and categorize them under different headings. No special logical or psychological principle will be followed in setting the order of this enumeration. The readers are invited to appreciate and enjoy the particular type of humour that each example provides in its splendid isolation.

1.Incongruity of the way and the goal:

Example: Here is an example of Greek witticism, of that of Hierocles. - A simpleton who heard that parrots live for two hundred years bought one to verify if it was indeed true.⁷¹

2.Humour of 'No' and a qualified 'Yes':

Example 1: Mark Twain speaks of a temperate old man who had 'never tasted liquor - unless, of course, you count whisky! '⁷²

Example 2: "... There are many good partners to men -wives who are devoted companions, wonderful home-managers, worthy respecters of their husbands' rights: they can be so scrupulous as never even to open letters addressed to their husbands' names - unless, of course, the letters are marked 'Private'."⁷³

3.Detection of the Achilles' heel:

This kind of humour arises out of the sudden and unexpected and, at the same time, amusing pointing out of the "hollow" side of the "high and mighty". Here is E.C. Bentley's 'estimate' of Christopher Wren, the celebrated designer of St. Paul's Cathedral.

"Sir Christopher Wren

Said, 'I'm going to dine with some men.

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If anybody calls

Say I am designing St. Paul's.' "⁷⁴

4.Sudden revelation of unexpected 'truth':

Example: "How shall I express my point? You know the saying: 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' Somebody has considered this an incomplete sentence and finished it thus: 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder - of absence!' "⁷⁵

5.Unexpected 'logic':

Example: A youth was tried for a particularly brutal crime, the murder of his mother and father with an axe. Confronted with overwhelming evidence, the trial judge was on the point of delivering a judgement of capital punishment. At that moment the youth pleaded for leniency, addressing the judge thus: "My Lord, have pity on me, I am an orphan."⁷⁶

6.Irrelevant exaggeration:

Example: Clarence Darrow, the celebrated lawyer, was a master in the art of using this device. In defending Thomas I. Kidd, a functionary of the Amalgamated Woodworkers' Union, who was indicted on a very serious charge of criminal conspiracy, Darrow spoke these moving words to the jury in order to arouse pity in the jurymen:

"I appeal to you not for Thomas Kidd, but I appeal to you for the long line - the long, long line reaching back through the ages and forward to the years to come - the long line of despoiled and downtrodden people of the earth. I appeal to you for those men who rise in the morning before daylight comes and who go home at night when the light has faded from the sky and give their life, their strength, their toil to make others rich and great. I appeal to you in the name of those women who are offering up their lives to this modern god of gold, and I appeal to you in the name of those little children, the living and the unborn," etc., etc.⁷⁷

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Prof. Irving M. Copi observes apropos of the above defence argument of Clarence Darrow: "Is Thomas Kidd guilty as charged? Darrow's appeal was sufficiendy moving to make the average juror want to throw questions of evidence and of law out the window. Yet, however persuasive such a plea might be, from the point of view of logic that argument is fallacious which draws from 'premises' such as these the conclusion that the accused is innocent."

7.Unexpected explanation:

Example: Appearances can be quite deceptive - the case of William Morris and the Eiffel Tower:

"William Morris, when he was in Paris for a fairly long stay, began to go everyday to the Eiffel Tower and sit from morning to evening, perched high there. At last, after a month of his daily visit, a friend said to him: 'William, what makes you so fond of the Eiffel Tower?' Morris replied: 'Fond? The blasted thing is so tall that it is forced on one's eyes in every nook and corner of Paris. I felt sick of it. So I have gone every day to the only place from which I can't see the monstrosity piercing into God's blue!'⁷⁸

So we see that the constant togetherness of Morris and the masterpiece of Monsieur Eiffel was no proof of the poet-painter's attachment!

8.Ingenious comparison:

To make ingenious metaphors demands both originality and training. Here are a few examples.

Examples: (i) "His face was like a ham."

(ii)"Her eyes were like puddles of molasses."

(iii)"His legs were like twenty-five minutes past six."

(iv)"His hair all hung over his face in tangled strings like he was behind vines."⁷⁹

9.Praise turns unexpectedly into dispraise:

Example: "If you could properly make out what Mallarme

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says he would consider himself to have failed. When a young lady once told him that she had understood one of his poems after brooding over it a while, the poet exclaimed: 'What a genius you are! You have so soon understood what I the author am still trying to understand after twenty years!' "⁸⁰

10.Twisted interpretation:

Example: Charles Bannister won fame as an actor in eighteenth-century England. One day a physician observing Bannister about to drink a glass of brandy warned: "Don't drink that filthy stuff; brandy is the worst enemy you have."

"I know that, I know that," replied the actor; "but what can I do? You know we are commanded by Scripture to love our enemies."⁸¹

11.Stating something absurd which, on reflection, proves to be apt:

Example: An orator in voicing the thanks of a meeting to a political leader solemnly said: "I hope that this distinguished gentleman may long be spared to continue his political career, and that even when he's dead he'll turn into a cigar."

A political leader turning after death into a cigar? What absurd thing does the orator mean by that? - Here is the explanation as given by Prof. Leacock:

"It has long been the custom in the United States for the makers of tobacco to name cigars after bygone statesmen — the Henry Clay cigar, the Stonewall Jackson cigar. Hence 'turning into cigar' becomes synonymous with obtaining immortality!"⁸²

12.Amusingly overstretched implication:

Example 1: Sheridan, an Irish M.P., has this dig at the parliamentary practice of amending a bill:

"First comes in a bill, imposing a tax, and then comes in a bill to amend that bill for imposing a tax; next a bill to remedy the defects of a bill for explaining the bill that amended the bill for imposing a tax; and so on ad infinitum.""

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13.Super-grammar:

Example: A desperate effort at trying to make one's language grammatically precise and tiptop leads to the production of a humorous effect as in the following:

"Mr. Spoffard told us all about his mother and I was really very very intrigued because if Mr. Spoffard and I become friendly he is the kind of gentleman that always wants a girl to meet his mother. I mean if a girl gets to know what kind of a mother a gentleman's mother is like, she really knows more what kind of a conversation to use on a gentleman's mother when she meets her. Because a girl like I is really always on the verge of meeting gentlemen's mothers. But such an unrefined girl as Dorothy is really not the kind of girl that ever meets gentlemen's mothers."⁸⁴

14.Exaggeration ad absurdum:

Example: "I knew a practically toothless man whose nerves were so shaky that he could never stand the sight of a drop of blood. Not only this: he even fought shy of red colour anywhere; it would remind him of blood and he would at once faint. Our Ashram Stores had to take care not to give him red hair-oil. Green oil was always given. If by any chance red was handed to him he would be all ready to collapse in Pavitra's arms! He even told me that to look at a red pencil was enough to make him dizzy."⁸⁵

15.Expressions intended to be right but in reality wrong when pressed:

Example: There were two notices put up in a South-Indian library. One ran: "Loose dogs not allowed." The second notice said: "Only low conversation permitted."

Dear readers, do you see the oddity of the notices? Of course, the intended meanings are quite clear: "Dogs should be in leash" and "Loud talk prohibited." But in English "loose dogs" and "low conversation" respectively signify "persons of lax morality" and "coarse and vulgar talk."⁸⁶

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You can see now the ludicrous incongruity between what the two notices are meant to convey and what they actually do.

16.Valid instruction becoming ludicrous when literally interpreted:

Example: The physician advised the patient: "Every morning take a walk on emply stomach."

The perplexed patient enquired: "On whose, Doctor?"⁸⁷

17.Expression apparently innocent but hiding a sting underneath:

Example: "A lady was telling Lord Palmerston that her maid objected to going to the Isle of Wight again, as the climate 'was not embracing enough', and added, 'What am I do with such a woman?'

"The statesman replied, 'You had better take her to the Isle of Man next time.' "^8S

18.Expression apparently absurd but, rightly understood, turns out to be quite correct:

Example: A gentleman having a remarkably long visage was one day riding by a school when he heard young Sheridan say: "That gentleman's face is longer than his life."

Struck by the strangeness of the remark, the passer-by turned his horse, and asked the boy what he meant by his phrase. "Sir," replied the would-be wit, "I meant no offence in the world, but I have read in the Bible at school that a man's life is but a span, and I am sure your face is double that length."⁸⁹

19.Clever trapping:

Example: (Play on the words "Here, here" and "hear, hear".) - Once upon a time there happened to be in the House of Commons a noisy member who had got into the habit of interrupting every speaker with cries of "Hear! Hear!". The celebrated Sheridan, a M.P. himself, thought of trapping this member into an embarrassing discomfiture.

One day while rising to speak in the Parliament Sheridan

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took an opportunity to allude to a well-known political character of the time, whom he represented as a person who wished to play the rogue but had only sense enough to play the fool. Then, at an opportune moment in course of the delivery of his 'impassioned' speech he exclaimed in emphatic continuation: "Where, where shall we find a more foolish knave or a more knavish fool than this one?" "Hear! Hear!" was instantly shouted from the usual seat. Sheridan bowed, thanked the gentleman for his ready affirmative reply to the question, and sat down amidst convulsions of laughter, in which it may be believed the hapless victim did not join.⁹⁰

20.Half true and half untrue:

Example: A pleasantry with regard to weather. - James Quin, a famous wit of the eighteenth century associated with the theatre, was asked one wet and cold July whether he ever remembered such a summer. "Yes, of course," said he, in all seriousness, "last winter."⁹¹

21.Incongruity of seeing the unexpected in the expected:

Example: There was a Frenchman who complained about the tiger: "Cet animal est tres rnechant, il se defend quand on I'attaqueV ("This animal is very nasty, it defends itself when attacked!")⁹²

22.Blown up by his own bomb:

Example: Here is the narration of a "little passage of arms between Bernard Shaw's cockiness and his own wife's quiet irony."

"Once he was holding forth to a company of friends on the comparative merits of man's mind and woman's. At the end of a coruscating monologue Shaw said that male judgment was always superior to female judgment. 'Of course,' Mrs. Shaw coolly replied, 'after all you married me and I you.' It was the one time the old battering-ram was silenced."⁹³

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23.Pedantic definitions:

Example 1: "lie = a locution deliberately antithetical to a verity apprehended by the intellect."

Example 2: "Eating = the successive performances of the functions of mastication, humectation and deglutination."⁹⁴

24.Humour of mistaken identity:

Example: Be it noted as a prelude that M. Coquelin was a great comedian who used to send his audience into rapturous laughter. Now, it so happened that a melancholy-looking man having come to consult a physician was told by the doctor that what he needed was not medicine but cheering up. "Go and see Coquelin on the stage this very evening and have a good laugh," concluded the doctor. The patient shook his head, "Sir, I am Coquelin."⁹⁵

25.Humour of deafness (genuine or pseudo-):

Example 1: (a case of genuine deafness):

"Two men in a suburban train, evidently commuters and each a little hard of hearing, engaged themselves in a bit of conversation when the train halted at a station.

Mr. X: Is this Wemsley?

Mr. Y: No, no. Thursday.

Mr. X: Yes, so am I; let's have a drink.⁹⁶

Example 2: (again a case of genuine deafness):

"Have you heard of the Abbe Bremond? It seems very few in India know that he existed. I discovered that even residents in French India were not familiar with his name. I looked up an old Indian Christian in Pondicherry whom I had known to be a book-lover. When I mentioned the Abbe Bremond to him he simply stood and gaped. I felt most self-conscious and began wondering whether I had committed some mistake in pronunciation of the French name.... But my fears were set at rest when the old fellow put a hand to his ear, bent that organ a little towards me and squeaked with irritation: 'Vraiment? Mais quoi vraiment? (Truly? but what truly?')⁹⁷

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26.Humour of misunderstanding:

Example: A judge, noted for his gentleness to defendants, asked the contrite and broken man before him, "Have you ever been sentenced to imprisonment?"

"No, your Honour," said the convict, and burst into tears.

"There, there, don't cry," consoled the judge, "You're going to be now."⁹⁸

27.Humour of deliberate misconstruing:

Example: "Do you know how a certain Armenian interpreted the famous Biblical phrase that reads in English: 'The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak'? This foreigner expressed his understanding of it thus: 'The whisky is good but the meat is rotten.' "⁹⁹

28.Foreign words suggesting a different sense:

Example: Goethe's original German line "Verweile dock, du bist so scbon" means "Linger a while, thou art so fair." To someone not knowing German the expression "doch" by its characteristic sound may suggest the abbreviation of "doctor": "doc." But how far from the truth we shall be! As Amal Kiran comments:

" 'Linger a while, thou art so fair.' - I doubt if any doctor would deserve such an appeal. A lady-doctor once sent a marriage-proposal to a friend of mine who is now in the Ashram. He simply shuddered because he felt she would try all sorts of medical and surgical experiments on him. I am sure he would fancy the first two words - "Verweile doch" - to be an echo of 'Fair wily doc' or, still more satisfyingly, 'Farewell, doc' "¹⁰°

29.Humour arising out of fallacious translation:

Example 1: In French, 'sous' means 'under' and 'tenir' means 'to stand'. But for that reason 'soutenir' does not mean 'to understand'; it means instead 'to support'. Now read the following account which is claimed by its author to be true to facts.

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"Sometimes mistakes occur by a wrong combination of words in a foreign language: two words that are clearly known by themselves may constitute a howler when wrongly combined. In the days when I was in charge of the Ashram's furniture department, I once got a note from a European but a non-English [French] resident: 'Will you please send me four wooden blocks to understand my table?' I wrote back: 'Certainly - since luckily you have not asked for four blockheads.' "^1U1

Other possible examples: Humour may arise out of a fallacious translation into English of the following French words: (i) 'Timbre-poste' understood as 'timber post' when it actually means a 'postage stamp'; (ii) 'Demander' translated as 'to demand' when it signifies the milder expression 'to ask for'; (iii) 'manipuler'; etc.

30. Humour of the 'logic' of mispronunciation:

Example 1: There are some odd people who pronounce the English vowels in a slightly aspirate way. Thus they pronounce 'e' as 'he', 'o' as 'ho', 'n' as 'hen', 'encroach' as 'hencroach', etc.

"A Japanese Consul visited the British Consul without an appointment. Now, his wife had done the same the day before. This Japanese had always imagined the word 'encroach' to be 'hencroach'. So with the intention of being logically correct in English he bowed before the British Consul and said with great politeness:

'Sir, yesterday you were kind enough to let my wife hencroach upon your time. May I be allowed today to cockroach upon it?' "¹⁰²

Example 2: To appreciate the humour involved in this second example let us bear in mind that Napoleon Bonaparte's coat of arms bore the insignia of an eagle.

"Lord John Russell sat at a city banquet next to a civic dignitary who taking a very beautiful snuff box from his pocket said: 'This was given to my father by the first Napoleon; there is a hen engraved on the top of it.' 'Surely,' said Russell, 'it cannot

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be a hen, it must be an eagle.' 'No, no,' said the owner, 'it's a hen, surely a hen,' - pointing as he spoke to the letter 'N' on the lid!"¹⁰³

31.Ingenious repartee:

Example: In a law-court the accused, who had a pretty flimsy case, protested to the judge: "My Lord, I have not said a single false word. Everything I have said is true. I have always been wedded to truth." The judge dryly remarked: "Very likely. But the point is: how long is it since you have been a widower?"¹⁰⁴

32.Tit for tat based on quick dual perception:

Example: Johannes Erigena, otherwise called John the Scot, was a ninth-century philosopher. When Erigena was at the French king's court, the monarch wanted to be clever and asked him one day at dinner: "John, what separates a Scot from a sot?" The king received from the philosopher this prompt reply: "Only the table, Sir!"¹⁰⁵

It is now high time to bring this long chapter on 'humour as an art' to a close. We have briefly referred to the nature and the evolution of the sense of humour, also of its linguistic expression through the media of words and ideas. We have at the same time indicated with appropriate examples in each case how, through the adoption of suitable principles and devices, the accomplished artists of humour try to produce the required humorous effect. In the perspective of this background let us now proceed to see from close quarters how Sri Aurobindo the multisided genius has left his stamp of excellence in the field of comic literature.

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REFERENCES

N.B. For what the abbreviations stand for please consult Bibliography on page 439.

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