Yet the measure of
exaggeration may be small and we readily discount it. And finally,
whereas in simple representation there is a revelation of the object
only, in comical representation there is a two-fold revelation,--of
the ideal and of the incongruous reality. The former is always
indirectly revealed; for, as we know, the very existence of the comic
depends upon it. The man who laughs, his notion of the right and the
reasonable, his attitude towards the world and life, become manifest
through the things which he laughs at. Only a man of a certain kind,
with a certain sympathy and antipathy, could laugh as he laughs. The
comic writer, however much of a scoffer and a skeptic, and however
much he may deny it, is always an idealist. And it is for the revelation
of themselves as much as for the revelation of the people whom they
portray that we value the work of a Swift, a Voltaire, or a Thackeray.
Another charge which has been brought against the comic is that it is
unsympathetic. Its attitude, it is said, is one of externality, opposed
therefore to the intimacy necessary for the complete aesthetic reaction.
Whereas simple aesthetic representation places us within the object
itself, comical representation only exhibits a relation between it and
an idea. We judge it from our point of view, not from its own. The
pleasure in pride and superiority which we feel towards the comical
object seems also inconsistent with sympathy; for sympathy would create
a fellow feeling with it, and place us not above, but on a level with
it.
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