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CHAPTER XXVI

NONSENSE AND RIDICULE

        Ordinary nonsense verses or sayings such as Irish bulls are apt to afford us the pleasure of laughter, like any absurdity which we can readily discover and regard as a relation of inferiority in respect to our intellectual activity. We are amused at the nonsense verses of "Alice in Wonderland," or even at the still more nonsensical verses of "Mother Goose." This is not due to the fact, as some imagine, of removal of inhibitions and ease of thought, but it is solely due to the relation of superiority and inferiority as well as to the satisfaction with ourselves and our mental resources which those absurdities and nonsense statements set into action. In short, the laughter in such cases is not due to diminution of activity and saving of mental energy, but, on the contrary, to the sense of increase and free expenditure of mental activity.

        The feeling of presence of sources of reserve energy, the sense of buoyancy, of mental activity, the upheaval of inner, latent energies raised from the conscious and the subconscious regions by associations of the relation of inferiority―all these conditions constitute the essence of the funny, the ludicrous, and the comic. It is not the saving, not the economizing of energy; but, quite the contrary, it is the reckless expenditure, the expansion of inner forces, the revelation of untold wealth, which can be carelessly thrown away at our pleasure, disclosed to our superior view by things and relations of an inferior character, it is that alone that gives rise to the mirth and merriment of the laughter, of the comic and the ludicrous. The laughter of the comic and the ludicrous is like the joy of viewing lowlands, valleys, ravines, and lower peaks from the height of some overtowering mountain top. The enjoyment does not consist so much in the fact that we ourselves feel bigger, as that we have the sensation of standing on higher ground. It is not we, it is the mountain and its scenery that are grand. Such sensations of grandeur, added to the feeling of our inner powers, are given to us subconsciously in laughter. In nonsense we experience the strength of our sense.

        Nonsense is often employed to bring out the inner absurdity of some saying or of some real relation in life or of some of the institutions which are regarded as holy and inviolable. The moral poems which children are made to memorize by rate in school are well ridiculed by the nonsense verses which Alice is made to repeat before the Caterpillar:

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,

    "And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head―

    Do you think at your age it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,

    "I feared it might injure my brain;

But now I am perfectly sure I have none,

    Why, I do it again and again."

At the same time in his frolicsome merriment and under the cloak of nonsense the writer manages to throw out a hint as to marital relations and family happiness :

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak

    For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose with the bones and the beak,

    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law

    And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, 

    Has lasted the rest of my life."

Take again the nonsense verses repeated as school lessons before the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle:

'Tis the voice of the lobster; I heard him declare,

You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.

As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose

Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.

"That is different from what I used to say when I child," said the Gryphon.

"Well I never heard it before," said the Mock Turtle, "but it sounds uncommon nonsense."

Take the parody on the silly verses, "Mary had a Little Lamb":

Mary had a little lamb,

    Likewise a lobster stew,

And ere the sunlit morning dawned

    She had a nightmare, too:

We may take another version:

Mary had a little lamp,

    Filled with benzoline;

Tried to light it at the fire,

    Has not since benzine.

To quote from "Mother Goose':

Three wise men of Gotham

Went to sea in a bowl;

If the bowl had been stronger,

My song had been longer.

The nonsense of "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is specially instructive:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

    Did' gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

    And the mome raths outgrabe.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When you say ‘hill,"' the Queen interrupted, "I could show you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a valley."

"No, I shouldn't," said Alice, surprised into contradicting her at last; "a hill can't be a valley, you know. That would be nonsense."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"It's only the Red King snoring," said Tweedledee.

"Come and look at him!" the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the king was sleeping.

"Isn't he a lovely sight?" said Tweedledum.

Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud, "fit to snore his head off!" as Tweedledum remarked.

"I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass," said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl. "He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee; "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"

Alice said, "Nobody can guess that."

"Why, about You!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?”

"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.

"Not you !" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why you're only a sort of thing in his dream !"

"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out―bang! ―just like a candle!"

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

"What sort of things do you remember best?" Alice ventured to ask.

"Oh, things that happened the week after next," the Queen replied in a careless tone.

"For instance, now," she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, "there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now being punished; and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday; and of course the crime comes last of all."

"Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Alice. "That would be all the better, wouldn't it?" the Queen said.

Humpty Dumpty sings:

I sent a message to the fish;

I told them "This is what I wish."

The little fishes of the sea

They sent an answer back to me.

The little fishes' answer was

"We cannot do it, Sir, because――"

        In the nonsense of "Alice Through The Looking Glass" we find that the ludicrous side lies in the uncommon, unusual, absurd combination of words and ideas.

        The unusual, surprising aspect of it is pleasant, while the illogical, absurd, and nonsensical side with the tendency of revealing the inferior makes of it that specific kind of laughter which is characteristic of the comic and the ludicrous. The unusual aspect stimulates our activi¬ties, which are apt to run into a rut by the ordinary stimuli of life, and thus brings out our subconscious energies held in reserve by the environment which has no demand for them. Just as we crave for new sensations so do we crave for new aspects of life. Even the nonsensical is a source of enjoyment.

        A form of verse adapted to a ludicrous subject and clothed in a clumsy, awkward, ludicrous expression with long and short feet may be found in the limerick. This form of versification well brings out our view of the ludicrous. The form consists of ill matched feet, while the subject and the climax, or rather the anti-climax, are trivial, low, and inferior. We find in the limerick the factor of suggestiveness present in the climax of the little poem with its sharp, unexpected, sudden turn, suggestive of the low, mean, ignoble, base, and disreputable. A few examples will best answer our purpose:

        There was a young man from the city,
        Who saw what he thought was a kitty,
            To make sure of that
            He gave it a pat.
        They buried his clothes―what a pity!

        We have here the sudden turn of the subject in the climax from the purring pussy with the strong suggestion of the mean, fetid skunk.

        Of a sudden the great prima-donna

Cried: "Heavens, my voice is a gonner!"

    But a cat in the wings

    Cried, "I know how she sings."

And finished the solo with honor.

        The ridicule here is in the juxtaposition of the primadonna and the eat; with the suggestive climax that even at her best the prima-donna's voice is nothing but a discordant caterwauling so hideous to people.

There was a young man of Ostend

Who vowed he'd hold out to the end,

    But when half way over

    From Calais to Dover

He done what he didn't intend.

        The vulgarity, the slang, and the suggestion in the climax of seasickness with its consequences of the inferior, referring to the uncontrollable side of man's lower organization and functions―all go to constitute the ludicrous in these limericks.

The inventor, he chortled with glee,

As they fished his airship from the sea,

    "I shall build," and he laughed,

    "A submarine craft,

And perhaps it will fly," remarked he.

Said the aeronaut in his balloon:

"I shall see all the stars very soon:"

    Soon he flopped and he dropped,

    And he saw when he stopped,

Four millions of stars and a moon.

An inventor who once did aspire

To invent a remarkable flier,

    When asked, "Does it go?"

    Replied, "I don't know,

I wait far some d――n fool to try'er."

        All these limericks are directed against the inferiority of aeronautics.

        The following limerick and its doggerel Latin version, though almost brutally vulgar, may be regarded as ludicrous on account of the implied suggestion of relation of inferiority:

There was a young lady of Riga

Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.

    They returned from the ride

    With the lady inside,

And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Puella Rigensis ridebat

Quam tigris in tergo vehebat;

    Externa profecta,

    Interna revecta,

Sed risus cum tigre manebat.

Solomon and David led very merry lives,

And had a most delightful time among their many wives,

But when at last their blood grew thin, they suffered many qualms,

Then Sol, he wrote the Proverbs, and Dave, he wrote the Psalms.

        Here the sublime and the profane, the holy and the scurrilous are brought into association and awaken the sense of the ludicrous. Whenever and wherever we meet with veiled suggestions of relations of inferiority, whether physical, intellectual, or moral, there we find the sense of the ludicrous aroused to activity. The slipping of a person on the street accompanied with profane language may be a source of the ludicrous:

There was a young girl named O'Dell

Who while walking down Chestnut street fell,

    She got up with a bound,

    And looked all around,

And said in a deep voice, "Oh, H――l!"

        The dignity of the girl, the fall, the unguarded profanity after looking all around, strongly suggest relations of inferiority.

        There are again limericks which in a jolly way point out the contrast between the assumed moral ideal of social life and actual practice:

There was a young lady from Kent,

Who always said just what she meant;

    People said, "She's a dear;

    So unique―so sincere,"

But they shunned her by common consent.

We may take another example which indicates relations of inferiority suggested to the reader:

There was a young fellow named S――m,

A foe to all pretense and Sh――m

    His language was l――se

    And he swore like the d―ce

When angry he always said d――m.

        The limerick sometimes avails itself of alliteration to bring out the comic effect. Alliteration is an inferior form of versification, and this is utilized to bring out an inferior form of activity:

A tutor who tooted the flute

Tried to teach two young tooters to toot;

    Said the two to the tutor;

    "Is it harder to toot, or

To tutor two tooters to toot?"

        In "Much Ado About Nothing" Shakespeare makes the reader laugh at Dogberry's stupidity, nonsense, absurdity, and asininity.

        Dog. Come hither, neighbor Seacole. God hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favored man is the gift, of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.

        . . . . . . .     . . . . . . . .

        Conrade. Away! You are an ass, you are an ass.

        Dog. . . . O that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written dawn, yet forget not that I am an ass.

        Dogberry makes his report to Don Pedro:

     D. Pedro. Officers, what offence have these men done?

    Dog. Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.

In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" Sir Hugh Evans, the parson, sings his nonsense verses which make of him a melodramatic fool:

To shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals;

There will make me our peds of roses,

And a thousand fragrant posies.

    To shallow―

Mercy on me!    I have a great disposition to cry. (Sings.)

Melodious birds sing madrigals―

When as I sat in Pabylon―

And a thousand vagram posies.

    To shallow, &c.

        Many different trains of thought, forming a tangle of associations thus ending in absurdity, folly and nonsense, disclosing relations of inferiority and states of stupidity, invariably awaken the sense of the ludicrous.

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