Cleansing power of laughter
To think about what is laughter, ridiculous, I made one almost incredible story. After reading M. Bulgakov’s novel “A Dog’s Heart,” I in an elated mood offered the book to my friend. A few days later she returned the book to me. To my question: “Well, how do you like the story?” – a friend with a grim expression said quite seriously: “To be honest, I did not even read it to the end.” You know, only the most soulless creature that can hardly be mocked by an animal man. “
At first I thought that my friend was joking. But when her lower lip quivered and she barely held back her tears, she added: “I was so sobbing… I do not know what you can laugh at here” – I, completely stunned, fell silent. It was after this incident that I began to search for the answer to the questions: “What is laughter?” Why do some people with half-words understand the meaning of the anecdote and start laughing,
It is said that according to the laughter culture one can judge about freedom in society. After all, in a free society satires and humor are not avoided even by such personalities as the president and ministers. And let someone say that we do not have such anecdotes. They existed in our people always, and people boldly told them to each other. Even in the era of the Stalinist regime, there were anecdotes and pranks. True, they were not told to everyone and everyone, for fear of tragic consequences.
The ability to laugh and think is the distinguishing feature of a person. So I’m sure that laughter will die with the man. It is absolutely impossible to imagine the time when laughter was forbidden. And there are such times in the history of mankind. For example, in the novel by U. Eco “The Name of the Rose”, it is told how the Franciscan monk Wilhelm Baskerville is investigating a whole series of mysterious deaths in the monastery. In the end, he reveals that the reason for the
The hero finds the book. He learns from her how comedy extracts the pleasant from the ridiculous and purifies it from fear.
To his question about what is bad in Aristotle’s reasoning about laughter, the blind monk Jorge – the main zealot of unshakable biblical traditions – responds: “Laughter is weakness, rottenness, licentiousness of our flesh, it is a rest for the peasant, freedom for the wine – in its infinite wisdom, gives the believers time for laughter – the time of holidays, carnivals, fairs… Laughter frees the commoner from fear of the devil, because at the feast of fools and the devil also looks poor and foolish, and therefore – manageable. could sow in the world the thought that liberation from fear, in front of the devil – science. Added with laughter and raspberry wine, the peasant feels himself master, Because he overturned the relationship of power, but this book could point out to scholars special tricks of wit, and so most legitimize the coup “.
The main conclusion from the dispute among learned monks of the Middle Ages is that laughter has a tremendous purifying power; he is able to make a revolution in the previous notions not only about life, but also about the entire world order. However, from the same reasoning, we understand that equally laughter has a creative power. Destroying the old, obsolete norms and practices, he creates a world free of conventions, exposing the injustice and irrationality of certain social relations, reveals human shortcomings.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)