论文部分内容阅读
钱钟书曾说：“真正的幽默是能反躬自笑的，它不但对于人生是幽默的看法，它对于幽默本身也是幽默的看法。”在他看来，真正幽默的人，应该能够对自己幽默，高过玩笑，是大雅的气度。
并不是每一个人都可以幽默，更不是每一个人都懂得幽默。想来，幽默的最高境界是笑过后的沉思，大处无眼，小处无孔，却融会贯通，深刻不显表面，沉下去的人生的精华。
“幽默的本质是什么？”怀特通过其清丽的文字，深入显出地道出个人观点，充满了智慧和才气。
Some Remarks on Humor (Expert)
E. B. White
Analysts have had their go at humor, and I have read some of this interpretative literature, but without being greatly instructed. Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
In a newsreel theatre the other day I saw a picture of a man who had developed the soap bubble to a higher point than it had ever before reached. He had become the first-class soap bubble blower of America, had perfected the business of blowing bubbles, refined it, doubled it, squared it, and had even worked himself up into a convenient lather. The effect was not pretty. Some of the bubbles were too big to be beautiful, and the blower was always jumping into them or out of them, or playing some sort of unattractive trick with them. It was, if anything, a rather repulsive sight. Humor is a little like that: it won’t stand much blowing up, and it won’t stand much poking. It has a certain fragility, an evasiveness, which one had best respect. Essentially, it is a complete mystery. A human frame convulsed with laughter, and the laughter becoming hysterical and uncontrollable, is as far out of balance as one shaken with the hiccoughs or in the throes of a sneezing fit.
One of the things commonly said about humorists is that they are really very sad people—clowns with a breaking heart. Three is some truths in it, but it is badly stated. It would be more accurate, I think, to say that there is a deep vein of melancholy running through everyone’s life and that the humorist, perhaps more sensible of it than some others, compensates for it actively and positively. Humorist fatten on trouble. They have always made trouble pay. They struggle along with a good will and endure pain cheerfully, knowing how willingly it will serve them in the sweet by and by. You find them wrestling with foreign languages, fighting folding ironing boards and swollen drainpipes, suffering the terrible discomfort of tight boots….They pour out their sorrows profitably, in a form that is not quite fiction nor quite fact either. Beneath the sparkling surface of these dilemma flows the strong tide of human woe.
Practically everyone is a manic depressive of sorts’ with his up moments and his down moments, and you certainly don’t have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings a person to the point where his emotional responses are untrustworthy and seem likely to break over into the opposite realm, it is because humor, like poetry, has an extra content. It plays close to the big hot fire which is Truth, and sometimes the reader feels the heat.
埃尔文·布鲁克斯·怀特（1899－1985），美国著名散文家、评论家，“其文风冷峻清丽，辛辣幽默，自成一格”。作为《纽约客》主要撰稿人，他一手奠定影响深远的“《纽约客》文风”。他也为孩子们写书，如《精灵鼠小弟》、《夏洛的网》等，深受读者喜爱。
培养幽默的有效途径是什么呢？
How to Foster Good Humor
Choose to allow yourself to laugh at your own behaviors and beliefs—but not at yourself. Make that distinction clearly.
See your life not as a distraught drama but as a romantic comedy. Recognize the inherent farce-like quality in situations including sex and relationships.
Cultivating humor not only makes life more bearable, it makes you more attractive to others. Study upon study shows that a sense of humor is high up on the list of traits that most people seek in a partner.
Insert silliness. Fill your life with one goofy thing a day. Make an unusual observation about someone. Or do something you normally wouldn't do. Wear something silly. You will learn that nothing terrible happens—and you may also discover that something good often happens.
Puncture a rigid mindset with a mental exercise called "paradoxical intention."
Suppose you have to give a speech and you are unduly anxious about looking uncomfortable. You can overcome the fear of failure by deliberately focusing on it and humorously exaggerating the very effect you fear.
Say you are worried about having to speak publicly and sweating profusely. Deliberately imagine a humorous situation where you are—literally—sweating like a fountain and spewing enough to drown the first row of the audience. Accept that you sweat like a fountain; imagine it and then think, what is the worst that could happen?
Exaggeration is funny because it skewers the falsehood. If you fail at a test or perform poorly at an audition, you could erroneously call yourself a failure. That, however, is an overgeneralization. Alternatively, you could see yourself as someone who failed at this particular thing, but in no way does that stamp you forever in this way.
Find the humor by saying, this makes me an utter wretch, a failure now and forever, a doomed and worthless subhuman, because I didn't get the part that I wanted or my partner isn't giving me the attention I want. Get into the exaggeration until you see the absurdity of seeing yourself as a "total failure."
Walk down the street remembering that people are nude under their clothes. It reduces fear of others. Such thoughts can take people of high status from deity to human. It helps to remember that everyone yells at their kids, spills ketchup, goes to the bathroom.
Play to an audience. Think of stories and items that would make others laugh.
Be sensitive to the words you use. They can rigidify or help loosen up your thinking.
Create cute, funny neologisms with your partner. Call it goofifying. Creating your own funny expressions for your experiences makes you more flexible and allows you to interpret and assess reality better.
Smile. Here's a favorite silly joke I can't resist passing along: What does an agnostic, dyslexic insomniac do? Stays up all night and wonders if there is a dog. ♥
并不是每一个人都可以幽默，更不是每一个人都懂得幽默。想来，幽默的最高境界是笑过后的沉思，大处无眼，小处无孔，却融会贯通，深刻不显表面，沉下去的人生的精华。
“幽默的本质是什么？”怀特通过其清丽的文字，深入显出地道出个人观点，充满了智慧和才气。
Some Remarks on Humor (Expert)
E. B. White
Analysts have had their go at humor, and I have read some of this interpretative literature, but without being greatly instructed. Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
In a newsreel theatre the other day I saw a picture of a man who had developed the soap bubble to a higher point than it had ever before reached. He had become the first-class soap bubble blower of America, had perfected the business of blowing bubbles, refined it, doubled it, squared it, and had even worked himself up into a convenient lather. The effect was not pretty. Some of the bubbles were too big to be beautiful, and the blower was always jumping into them or out of them, or playing some sort of unattractive trick with them. It was, if anything, a rather repulsive sight. Humor is a little like that: it won’t stand much blowing up, and it won’t stand much poking. It has a certain fragility, an evasiveness, which one had best respect. Essentially, it is a complete mystery. A human frame convulsed with laughter, and the laughter becoming hysterical and uncontrollable, is as far out of balance as one shaken with the hiccoughs or in the throes of a sneezing fit.
One of the things commonly said about humorists is that they are really very sad people—clowns with a breaking heart. Three is some truths in it, but it is badly stated. It would be more accurate, I think, to say that there is a deep vein of melancholy running through everyone’s life and that the humorist, perhaps more sensible of it than some others, compensates for it actively and positively. Humorist fatten on trouble. They have always made trouble pay. They struggle along with a good will and endure pain cheerfully, knowing how willingly it will serve them in the sweet by and by. You find them wrestling with foreign languages, fighting folding ironing boards and swollen drainpipes, suffering the terrible discomfort of tight boots….They pour out their sorrows profitably, in a form that is not quite fiction nor quite fact either. Beneath the sparkling surface of these dilemma flows the strong tide of human woe.
Practically everyone is a manic depressive of sorts’ with his up moments and his down moments, and you certainly don’t have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings a person to the point where his emotional responses are untrustworthy and seem likely to break over into the opposite realm, it is because humor, like poetry, has an extra content. It plays close to the big hot fire which is Truth, and sometimes the reader feels the heat.
埃尔文·布鲁克斯·怀特（1899－1985），美国著名散文家、评论家，“其文风冷峻清丽，辛辣幽默，自成一格”。作为《纽约客》主要撰稿人，他一手奠定影响深远的“《纽约客》文风”。他也为孩子们写书，如《精灵鼠小弟》、《夏洛的网》等，深受读者喜爱。
培养幽默的有效途径是什么呢？
How to Foster Good Humor
Choose to allow yourself to laugh at your own behaviors and beliefs—but not at yourself. Make that distinction clearly.
See your life not as a distraught drama but as a romantic comedy. Recognize the inherent farce-like quality in situations including sex and relationships.
Cultivating humor not only makes life more bearable, it makes you more attractive to others. Study upon study shows that a sense of humor is high up on the list of traits that most people seek in a partner.
Insert silliness. Fill your life with one goofy thing a day. Make an unusual observation about someone. Or do something you normally wouldn't do. Wear something silly. You will learn that nothing terrible happens—and you may also discover that something good often happens.
Puncture a rigid mindset with a mental exercise called "paradoxical intention."
Suppose you have to give a speech and you are unduly anxious about looking uncomfortable. You can overcome the fear of failure by deliberately focusing on it and humorously exaggerating the very effect you fear.
Say you are worried about having to speak publicly and sweating profusely. Deliberately imagine a humorous situation where you are—literally—sweating like a fountain and spewing enough to drown the first row of the audience. Accept that you sweat like a fountain; imagine it and then think, what is the worst that could happen?
Exaggeration is funny because it skewers the falsehood. If you fail at a test or perform poorly at an audition, you could erroneously call yourself a failure. That, however, is an overgeneralization. Alternatively, you could see yourself as someone who failed at this particular thing, but in no way does that stamp you forever in this way.
Find the humor by saying, this makes me an utter wretch, a failure now and forever, a doomed and worthless subhuman, because I didn't get the part that I wanted or my partner isn't giving me the attention I want. Get into the exaggeration until you see the absurdity of seeing yourself as a "total failure."
Walk down the street remembering that people are nude under their clothes. It reduces fear of others. Such thoughts can take people of high status from deity to human. It helps to remember that everyone yells at their kids, spills ketchup, goes to the bathroom.
Play to an audience. Think of stories and items that would make others laugh.
Be sensitive to the words you use. They can rigidify or help loosen up your thinking.
Create cute, funny neologisms with your partner. Call it goofifying. Creating your own funny expressions for your experiences makes you more flexible and allows you to interpret and assess reality better.
Smile. Here's a favorite silly joke I can't resist passing along: What does an agnostic, dyslexic insomniac do? Stays up all night and wonders if there is a dog. ♥