WHAT IS HUMOUR?

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1354, 3 February 1912, Page 9

WHAT IS HUMOUR?

if. Maurice Dekobra (says a writer in the ".Manchester Guardian") lias been applying to some of the lending _ coinic writers in Europe J'or a definition ot humour, and the article into which he lias woven their replies'-makes entertaining reading in the number of "La Kerne" for the first half of the month. Of course Hone of the definitions is satisfactory. Humour is too elusive and subtle a spirit for definition, and is not to bo caught, even as the soul of Omiphritis was by the mage, "between two brushes." Some of the writers accordingly fall back upon describing the humorist, and, oven so, it is apparent that there are two different conceptions of humour in their minds. One set of writers are for limiting it to its manifestations in irony and satire, the other would limit it to what is called "pure humour." Thus It. Dokobra warns us that tho humorist is not a mere "funny Bian"; "he is a sago who consciously sets himself to destroy our illusions, having first dispelled his own, and who, to prove the relativity of all things, saddens our rafoty and enlivens our sadness." Mr. Courtney distinguishes wit, as tho elferTosrenca of a ii?ht character, from humour, which bolei'!3 "to a more morose taA jomstiiues a deeper temperament,"

and is often only the manifestation of a high-strung sensibility. On tho other hand, ft Swedish contributor says: "The humorist is always contented with existence; lie cannot therefore be a pessimist. Ho smiles benevolently at <11 that lito oll'crs him of grotesque. His motives are exclusively good, his.intentions also, 110 does not*indulge in satire or irony, he penetrates and pardons," Hark Twain ofi'ers tho purest conception of humour of this sort. Now usage lias sanctioned the application in p. rough way of tho word humour to satire and irony, but there is a certain technical advantage in limiting it to humour puroaud simple. The distinction is an easy one. Tho humorist raises the laugh for the laugh's sake, whereas with the satirist it is only a means to an end, tho end being tho criticism and laceration of tho object of his antipathy. Thus in tho couplet in "Itudibras which describes people who Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning tIiOHO they liavo no mind to, Bntlor does make a very effectual bid for the reader's laugh, but it is only in order to enlist his sympathy in condemning a certain ordor of Puritan character. Similarly, Swift, in "Sid Ilamet's Hod": — Sid's rod was slender, wliito and tali, Which oft he used to fish withal; A place was fastened to the hook, , And many score of gudgeons t<x>k; ■ Yet still, so happy was his fate, He caught his nsu anu safu u.s bait. Tliis is joyously funny, but Swift would have reckoned lie had" failed if the reader's laugh did not glance from the witticism to tho person of tiodolphin. Those instances may remind us that the affinity oi satiro is with wit, rather than with humour. Of tho latter geniality is of tin very asseuce. It is, as Jlr. Zangwill fays, "the smile upon tho face of wisdom."