|
|
|
|
|
|
(3) as the grotesque drama of an impossible definition. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. The definition of Humor |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The essay's first part, in which Pirandello surveys the better-known theories and tries to apply them to an analysis of Humor in Italian literature, gives the impression that he is always missing the mark. He begins by discussing Humor, and he defines the Comic instead; he ends up with Irony. In the second part, he attempts a theoretical systematization. At the very moment in which he seems to have accomplished it, he practically abandons it because, as we shall see, he is defining something elselet us say Art and Life in general. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Let us try to pinpoint Pirandello's explanation of Humor as an aesthetic experience and the ways in which the Humorist's attitude enters into the process of artistic creation. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Art is created by the imagination, which organizes its own vision, giving to life a harmonious whole. If there exist any rules or preexisting structures (because of tradition, language, culture in general), imagination destroys them and rebuilds them with a kind of nonanalyzable impulse. The creation has a new, original, harmonious form like that of a living being. This entire process is ruled and accompanied by what Pirandello calls "conscience" or "reflection." Like a mirror, reflection gives to the imagination the critical image of its own process and aids it in controlling its own movements. In the creation of the Humorist, however, reflection takes the upper hand: it intervenes directly in the process itself; it explicitly and actively controls the imagination, fragmenting its movement into many partspedantically, minutely, and analytically. Reflection, in other words, constantly blocks the imagination as if saying to it, Look here, you thought that the things that you created were just as you imagined them to beperfect. But they could also be entirely different. Reflection follows the imagination at every step of the way, showing it that everything could also be the opposite of what it appears to be. When in this process there arises only a "perception of the opposite," we have what Pirandello calls the Comic. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In this respect, his position falls within the classical theories of the Comic. For Aristotle, the Comic is something that has gone wrong, as occurs whenever in a sequence of events there appears an element that alters the normal order. For Kant, laughter arises when we arrive at an absurd situation that defies our initial expectations. But in order to laugh at this "error," it is also necessary that we not be involved in it and that we experience a feeling of superiority at the error of someone |
|
|
|
|
|