So, instead of
writing, they fall back into the routine of their ancestors and merely
smoke and dream. Here are failure and mediocrity; yet so intimate is
the artist's story that we not only understand it all, but feel how
good it is--to dream our lives away. I do not doubt that in this story
there are elements of pathos and comedy; yet, in general, the
delineation is too objective for either; we neither laugh nor cry, but
are simply borne on, unresisting, ourselves become a part of the silent
tide of Russian life.
The problem of evil in aesthetics may finally be solved by the use of
the comic. For in comedy we take pleasure in an object which, in the
broadest sense, is evil. In order for an object to be comical there
must be a standard or norm, an accepted system, within which the object
pretends but fails to fit, and with reference to which, therefore, it
is evil. There must be some points of contact between the object and
the standard in order that there may be pretense, but not enough points
for fulfillment. If we never had any definite expectations with
reference to things, never made any demands upon them; if instead of
judging them by our preconceived ideas, we took them just as they came
and changed our ideas to meet them,--there would be nothing comical.
Or, if everything fitted into our expectations and was as we planned
it, then again there would be nothing comical. In a world without
ideas, the comic could not exist. The comic depends upon our
apperceiving an object in terms of some idea and finding it incongruous.
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