Humor and satire in W. Shakespeare's comedies

1.3. humorous genre.
Humor (eng. humour - a quirk, mood, temper, comedy, humor), a kind of comic, good-natured laughter with a serious background. The word "humor" comes from the Latin humor - liquid: it was believed that the four bodily fluids determine the four temperaments, or characters. One of the first to use this word in literature was B. Johnson, who created at the end of the 16th century. comedies “Everyone with his whim” and “Everyone outside of his whims” (literally “in his own humor” and “outside his humor”) - but still in the satirical, not fixed meaning of the flawed one-sidedness of the character (deafness, greed, etc.) . Subsequently, S. T. Coleridge , in the article “On the difference between witty, funny, eccentric and humorous” (1808 - 11), quoted B. Johnson’s poems about liquids: blood, phlegm, light and dark bile, which “govern character and disposition”, and defined humor in a new sense: it is “an unusual connection of thoughts or images that produces the effect of the unexpected and thus gives pleasure.
“ Humor stands out from other types of witty, which are impersonal, not colored by individual understanding and feeling. At least in high humor there is always a hint of a connection with some idea, which is not finite in nature, but finite in form ... ". The English romantic speculated on the disinterestedness of humor, its resemblance to "pathos", called the literary images he noted: such are Falstaff in Shakespeare, the characters of L. Stern, T. J. Smollett. Humor for Coleridge is “a state of mind, her indefinable giftedness, a talent that gives a mocking poignancy to everything that she absorbs into herself daily and hourly, and at the same time there is nothing special in a person with humor, he is just like us, goes astray, makes slips, makes mistakes .”
And Coleridge , and about the same time Jean-Paul, pointed out that ancient authors did not have humor in the modern sense, who "enjoyed life too much to despise it humorously." Jean-Paul also recalled Shakespeare, but somewhat distanced him from humor. as such, stating that "Stern turns even Shakespeare's alternating series of pathetic and comic into simultaneity." The seriousness of the humor was emphasized; English humor was recognized as the best (in a similar way, but less flattering for the British, J. de Stael spoke out). English humor is indeed proverbial. Its highest manifestations in the 18th century. - novels by Stern, at 19 - by C. Dickens (Mr. Pickwick is a typical humorous character). The humor of French literature is much less characteristic: it was noted that even in A. Daudet's "Tartarin from Tarascon", the most famous variation of the "quixotic" plot, irony, the national French form of the comic, prevails over humor. (LE Pinsky ), but its emergence as a high comedy is associated precisely with Cervantes' Don Quixote. The unsurpassed American humorist is Mark Twain.
The origins of humor are traced back to archaic ritual-game and festive laughter, but unlike other types of laughter and comic, theoretically comprehended already in antiquity, it was recognized as something qualitatively new only by the aesthetics of the 18th century. In Russian literature, the pinnacle of humor is the early work of N. V. Gogol. His " humor " was enthusiastically appreciated by V. G. Belinsky, who, however, interpreted " humor " in contrast to "humor" as angry laughter in the spirit of J. Swift and J. Byron. Gogol's humor has a less personal tinge than Western European, his originals, eccentrics, are not as distinguished from the mass as Don Quixote, Mr. Shandy or Mr. Pickwick, whose eccentricities correspond to the original meaning of the word "humor" The author of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka is close to folk laughter culture, in later works he is more satirical, but always retains both humor and self-valuable laughter of ancient origin, which are sometimes difficult to distinguish in Dead Souls (for example, the images of Petrushka and Selifan).
Gradually, the high side of humor in literature weakened and was lost. Since the 1880s Humorism as a supra-genre layer of entertainment literature was widely spread. A.P. Chekhov began in this vein, although his early work contained the beginnings of future serious artistic discoveries. Chekhov's last comedy, The Cherry Orchard, is permeated with exceptionally subtle humor in the high sense of the word. Silver Age and 1920s gave rise to talented humor - the works of Teffi, Sasha Cherny, A. T. Averchenko, M. M. Zoshchenko and others. Humorous and serious up to the tragic are combined in the work of M. A. Bulgakov, M. A. Sholokhov, A. T. , V. M. Shukshina, V. I. Belova. At the same time, the meaning of the word “humor” in Soviet times lost its certainty, a non -differentiating phrase “satire and humor” arose. It is relatively justified in relation to pop comedy (A. I. Raikin, humorous writers M. M. Zhvanetsky, G. I. Gorin , A. M. Arkanov) that actually combines different types of laughter, including quite valuable in itself, just mixing. Basically, such a genre formation as humoresque belongs to entertaining humorous literature and pop laughter. SI Kormilov
Humor - originally in Latin, the word humor meant liquid, juice. It received other meanings in connection with medieval medicine, according to which the healthy state of the human body depends on the proper properties and combination of the four fluids contained in the body. Little by little, the name humor came to be attached to this proper combination of bodily fluids and the resulting healthy state of the body and especially the spirit. Thus, quite early the word humor (German Humor , French humeur ) began to mean mood in European languages, sometimes bad (among the French), sometimes mostly good (among the Germans from the 18th century). This latter understanding became the basis of the peculiar meaning of the word humor, which it acquired in the literature of the Germanic peoples, especially the English, who provided the highest examples of this literary and aesthetic genre. However, it is hardly possible to see in humor only a literary form or an aesthetic category. As Lazarus has shown , humor is both, because it is, first of all, a special worldview . To worldviews based on the dominance of thought, Lazarus contrasts two worldviews associated with the activity of feeling: romantic and humorous. Romance is rooted in thought in the finite and is connected through feeling with the world of the infinite. Humor is the opposite of it: thought connects it with the world of distractions; close to subjective idealism, he sees in thought the only reality, in spirit - the creator of everything in man and in the world; but to him—and this is his essence and his difference from bare reasoning—everything finite is also close to him; the fresh immediacy of feeling connects it with the world of the finite. Romance, breaking away from this world, rises on the wings of feeling and excited fantasy to the realms of the ideal and the eternal, never reaching, never clearly knowing them; humor - also through feeling - descends from the heights of its idealism to the mundane and finite, in order to warm it with its warmth. The subjectivity of feeling is the realm of romance, the subjectivity of thought is the realm of humor. The picture of the mental make-up that determines the humorous depiction of life is clear. In the even nature of a thinking and passive contemplator, the imperfections of life do not give rise to that ardent rebuff to which they call for a person of a fighting and active temperament. Far from the impulse to intervene in the struggle, in the consciousness of his impotence to solve this struggle, he does not, however, remain indifferent. He knows the value of both sides, sees the weaknesses of his sympathies, and, remaining an objective spectator, never ceases to distinguish between his own and others. In his image there is neither bitterness, nor bile, nor satire; in its illumination, life is imbued with a soft gleam of a kind smile over the right and the guilty, over the great and the small, over the wise and the naive. This deep mood of a thoughtful artist, caused by the contrast between the world of the ideal and the world of reality, finds expression in a humorous presentation of life. Representing, thus, a special way of understanding the world, humor naturally finds expression in a special aesthetic category and in a special literary coloring.
Using the old classification of temperaments, it is possible, with certain reservations, to say that the choleric is characterized by a pathetic image of life, the melancholic is elegiac, the sanguine is comic, the phlegmatic is humorous. In aesthetics, therefore, it is important to distinguish humor from the comic and sublime, in literature - from satire . The action, superficially similar to the action of the comic, is essentially the opposite of it in a certain sense: it is not so impetuous, it does not cause an outburst of laughter by the unexpectedness of the contrast, but is deeper and more prolonged. The witticism is easily forgotten - the mood awakened by the quiet, sad smile of humor remains enduring in the soul. There are, of course, combinations of comedy and humor: individual misadventures of Don Quixote can only be comical, but in its totality the fate of the noble knight of a sad image is an example of the most sublime Yu. norms of the phenomenon, humor stops on its serious side or, on the contrary, stops on the funny sides of what everyone considers serious. Therefore, it is not without reason that Yu is defined as “sublime in the comic.” Both the sublime and the comic are based on the action of contrast. The sublime consists in depicting persons, characters, actions or phenomena and relationships far exceeding in size and significance the usual and general measure of things corresponding to the world. In the comic, the phenomena depicted turn out to be equally below this generally accepted norm. So, the contrast between the image and what our thought expects is the basis of these two categories. But while the sublime and the comic are limited only to the depiction of their object, assuming in the spectator a ready-made measure of things, the contrast with which will make the object sublime or comic for him, humor depicts this very contrast. The phenomenon, depending on the point of view, can be great or small, reasonable or absurd, ideal or material: humor connects these points of view - and the subject in its image becomes not sublime or comic, but both at the same time, i.e. humorous. The balance of both sides in contrast is the most characteristic feature of humor. It would seem that there is not and cannot be any balance between the actual phenomenon and that ideal norm, which serves as the only and infallible measure of the assessment of reality. But if everything true, just and reasonable is embodied in the idea, then even the most imperfect and unreasonable reality still has advantages over it: firstly, it exists and thereby acquires independence in the human soul, sometimes defending itself contrary to the requirements of the idea; secondly, the very value of an idea depends to a certain extent on its power to be realized: ideas that cannot be realized are dead ideas. Connected by the life of feeling with the real world, humor comes from a deep awareness of the significance, value and truth of the ideal. However, he does not stigmatize the real for its deviation from the ideal: he sympathizes with it, finding in it an inexhaustible source for the living activity of feeling. But there is little immediacy in this feeling: humor is sentimental and, perhaps, that is why it feels such a penchant for everything naive, small, offended, for simple people, for children and the elderly. Passive and forgiving sympathy for what is depicted is a characteristic feature of humor. If satire is characterized by indignation, elegy - sorrow, then the natural mood of humor is a quiet sadness, easily turning into a smile. The pathos of satire turns against negative phenomena, which she compares with her ideal. The elegiac mood mourns for lost or unattainable bliss, the idyllic mood artificially recreates it. Everywhere we come across the volitional element, everywhere an active attitude of feeling towards the depicted world is manifested. On the contrary, humor exposes the world to its imperfection: it celebrates it and chuckles. The scope of satire is narrower: it concerns only moral and social phenomena; the eternal laws that govern the fate of the individual pass by it. That is why it is irreconcilable: humor bows before the inevitable, satire leaves the contradiction between the ideal and reality unreconciled . And meanwhile, from the point of view of the satirist, this reconciliation would be possible if there were no those guilty of violating the law of life. And that's why satire, indignant, hardens us, and humor soothes. The satirist tends to be pessimistic, the humorist to optimistic; the satirist is an idealist, the humorist is a realist.
Theorists offer still other various attempts to classify the diverse phenomena of humor. There are three types of humor - mood humor, image humor, character humor; three of its degrees are also distinguished: 1) positive humor (or optimistic, humor in the narrow sense),
2) negative humor, satirical, and, finally,
3) reconciled humor, overcoming naked denial, ironic. A humorous attitude to oneself or to the world is at first optimistic: a person notices everything insignificant, unreasonable and little conscious, laughs at it, maintaining peace of mind; the unreasonable in individual phenomena does not shake his faith in the great and reasonable. This attitude is replaced by an indignant one: negative phenomena are presented as the victorious opponent of the "idea" in its purest form; The “idea” retains its dominance in the mind of the observer, unmasks the insignificant and appears in all its fullness and inviolability. Negative phenomena seem insignificant at this height and evoke one irony, which - being itself a combination of sharp opposites - is often an expression of humor. These three stages also differ in objective humor. Great gift of genuine humor. is the lot of a few writers. One talent is not enough here; one must be broad, not blurred in indifference; one must be condescending and kind, knowing how to despise and hate; it is necessary to combine with the naturalness of wit a sensitive tact and a sense of proportion; one must be able to combine realism and idealism, maneuvering between the exceptional naturalism of brute truth and the painful irreality of the romantics. Zhukovsky has no humor, Zola does not have it, there is no decadence in literature - there is not and could not be. They say that Hegel could not stand and did not understand the works of Jean Paul; this is quite understandable - the fascinations and distractions of thinking, which has severed its connection with the world of reality, cannot on any grounds converge with humor, full of an enduring sense of the real world. This two-sided, equally strong and strong connection of humor with the world of reality and with the world of ideas is its characteristic difference. His common sense is alien to ideology to the same extent that his idealism is alien to the unprincipled vulgarity of practice. The greatest work of humor, Don Quixote, is at the same time the mockery of a healthy mind over the fantasies of a madman, and the triumph of deep idealism over coarse and vulgar common sense, "the mind of a fool."