论文部分内容阅读
Stephen Butler Leacock（斯蒂芬·巴特勒·里柯克，1869—1944），加拿大著名的幽默作家，也是加拿大第一位享有世界声誉的作家。在美国，他被认为是继马克·吐温之后最受人欢迎的幽默作家。他出生于英格兰汉普郡的斯旺穆尔，6岁时随父母迁居加拿大并在那里接受教育。1891年他从多伦多大学毕业后当了8年中学教员；1899年，他进入美国芝加哥大学攻读经济学与政治学；1903年获得政治经济学的哲学博士学位，并开始在加拿大麦吉尔大学任教，先后担任政治学讲师等职；1936年，他从教学岗位上退下来，担任该校的名誉教授。
里柯克二十几岁就开始写作幽默小品。他的第一部幽默小品集子（其中收集了他于1891年至1899年期间所写的作品）出版于1910年，当时他已经40岁了。此后他便笔耕不辍，虽也写过一些其他形式的文学作品如诗歌、剧本、传记以及文学理论等，但他本人最喜爱的，也写得最多的还是幽默小品，共有将近30个集子。里柯克的幽默是一种淡淡的、含蓄的幽默，他不是靠奇特、滑稽的故事情节来把读者逗得哈哈大笑，而是善于从平淡无奇的日常生活中提炼出一些为大家司空见惯却又往往熟视无睹的可笑的和不合理的东西加以放大后呈现在读者面前，让他们产生共鸣而露出会心的微笑或无奈的苦笑。本期节选的这篇《幽默之我见》语言风趣、十分耐人回味，值得细细品读一番。
Until two weeks ago I might have taken my pen in hand to write about humour with the confident air of an 1)acknowledged professional. But that time is past. Such claim as I had has been taken from me. In fact I stand unmasked. An English reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said of my writing, “What is there, after all, in Professor Leacock’s humour but a rather ingenious mixture of 2)hyperbole and 3)myosis?”
The man was right. How he 4)stumbled upon this trade secret I do not know. But I am willing to admit, since the truth is out, that it has long been my custom in preparing an article of a humorous nature to go down to the cellar and mix up half a gallon of myosis with a pint of hyperbole. If I want to give the article a 5)decidedly literary character, I find it well to put in about half a pint of 6)paresis. The whole thing is amazingly simple. But I only mention this by way of introduction and to7)dispel any idea that I am 8)conceited enough to write about humour, with the professional authority of [1]Ella Wheeler Wilcox writing about love, or [2]Eva Tanguay talking about dancing.
All that I dare claim is that I have as much sense of humour as other people. And, oddly enough, I notice that everybody else makes this same claim. Any man will admit, if need be, that his sight is not good, or that he cannot swim, or shoots badly with a rifle, but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him a mortal 9)affront.
“No,” said a friend of mine the other day, “I never go to Grand Opera,” and then he added with an air of pride, “You see, I have absolutely no ear for music.”
“You don’t say so!” I exclaimed.
“None!” he went on. “I can’t tell one tune from another. I can’t tell whether a man is tuning a violin or playing a sonata.”
He seemed to get prouder and prouder over each item of his own deficiency. He ended by saying that he had a dog at his house that had a far better ear for music than he had. As soon as his wife or any visitor started to play the piano the dog always began to howl—10)plaintively, he said—as if it were hurt. He himself never did this. When he had finished I made what I thought a harmless comment. “I suppose,” I said, “that you find your sense of humour deficient in the same way: the two generally go together.” My friend was 11)livid with rage in a moment. “Sense of humour!” he said. “My sense of humour! Me without a sense of humour! 12)Why, I suppose I’ve a keener sense of humour than any man, or any two men, in this city!” From that he turned to bitter personal attack. He said that my sense of humour seemed to have withered altogether. He left me, still quivering with indignation.
To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice. I admit that there is in all of us a certain 13)vein of the old original 14)demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin. It ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and 15)pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin. But it is. When a skater on a pond who is describing graceful circles, and showing off before the crowd, breaks through the ice and 16)gets a ducking, everybody shouts with joy. To the original 17)savage, the18)cream of the joke in such cases was found if the man who slipped broke his neck, or the man who went through the ice never came up again. I can imagine a group of 19)prehistoric men standing round the ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing till their sides split. If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric newspaper, the affair would have headed up: “Amusing Incident. Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and Is Drowned.”
But our sense of humour under civilisation has been weakened. Much of the fun of this sort of thing has been lost on us. Children, however, still retain a large share of this primitive sense of enjoyment. I remember once watching two little boys making snow-balls at the side of the street and getting ready a little store of them to use. As they worked, there came along an old man wearing a 20)silk hat and belonging by appearance to the class of “jolly old gentlemen.” When he saw the boys his gold spectacles gleamed with kindly enjoyment. He began waving his arms and calling, “Now, then, boys, free shot at me! Free shot!” In his 21)gaiety he had, without noticing it, 22)edged himself over the sidewalk on to the street. An 23)express cart collided with him and knocked him over on his back in a heap of snow. He lay there gasping and trying to get the snow off his face and spectacles. The boys gathered up their snow-balls and took a run toward him. “Free shot!” they yelled. “24)Soak him! Soak him!”
…
One can indeed make the 25)sweeping assertion that the telling of stories as a mode of amusing others ought to be kept within strict limits. Few people realise how extremely difficult it is to tell a story so as to reproduce the real fun of it. The mere “facts” of a story seldom make it funny. It needs the right words, with every word in its proper place. Here and there, perhaps once in a hundred times, a story turns up which needs no telling. The humour of it turns so completely on a sudden twist or 26)incongruity in the 27)denouement of it that no narrator, however clumsy, can altogether28)fumble it. Take, for example, this well-known instance—a story which, in one form or other, everybody has heard. “[3]George Grossmith, the famous comedian, was once badly 29)run down and went to consult a doctor. It happened that the doctor, though, like everybody else, he had often seen Grossmith on the stage, had never seen him without his make-up and did not 30)know him by sight. He examined his patient, looked at his tongue, felt his pulse and tapped his lungs. Then he shook his head. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, sir,’ he said, ‘except that you’re run down from overwork and worry. You need rest and amusement. Take a night off and go and see George Grossmith at the 31)Savoy.’ ‘Thank you,’ said the patient, ‘I am George Grossmith.’”
…
No doubt the story-telling habit owes much to the fact that ordinary people, quite unconsciously, rate humour very low: I mean, they underestimate the difficulty of “making humour.” Because the result is gay and light, they think the process must be. Few people would realise that it is much harder to write one of [4]Owen Seaman’s “funny” poems in Punch than to write one of the [5]Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermons. Mark Twain’s[6]Huckleberry Finn is a greater work than [7]Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and [8]Charles Dickens’s creation of )[9]Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race—I say it 32)in all seriousness—than [10]Cardinal Newman’s Lead, Kindly Light, Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
But the deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humour is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world’s humour, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilisation. One thinks here not of the mere 33)spasmodic effects of the comic artist or the 34)blackface expert of the 35)vaudeville show, but of the really great humour which, once or twice in a generation at best, illuminates and elevates our literature. It is no longer dependent upon the mere trick and 36)quibble of words, or the odd and meaningless incongruities in things that strike us as “funny.” Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and 37)fretful anxieties of today that fade into nothingness tomorrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle 38)retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. And here, in its larger aspect, humour is blended with 39)pathos till the two are one, and represent, as they have in every age, the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our 40)lot on earth.
若是在两个星期之前让我来谈幽默，我会带着公认的行家所特有的自信提笔挥就。可现在不同了。那样的声势已消散。事实上，我的“面具”被揭穿了。一位英国评论家在某本文学杂志上——只要一说出该杂志的名字，便无人敢起来反驳——评论我的作品说：“里柯克教授的幽默充其量不过是‘夸张法’和‘缩小术’的巧妙杂揉，除此之外还有什么呢？”
他说对了。至于他是如何碰巧发现这一商业机密的，我无从知道。但既然他已一语道破，我也甘愿承认我长期以来的习惯做法就是：每逢要写幽默文章，我就到地窖里去，把半加仑“缩小剂”和一品脱“夸张剂”混合起来。而假如想赋予文章以明显的文学感，我发现最好是再往其中掺入半品脱局部麻醉剂。整个制作过程简单得惊人。我把这一秘诀公之于众，旨在说明情况并避免别人以为我妄自尊大，竟敢以行家里手的身份来谈论幽默，就像埃拉·威勒·威尔柯克斯论述爱情，或者伊娃·坦奎谈论舞蹈那样。
我唯一敢声称的是，我的幽默感不亚于世上任何人。非常奇怪的是，我注意到别人也都这样表态。如有需要，任何人都愿意承认自己视力不好，或者不会游泳，或者枪法很糟糕，但假如你说他缺乏幽默感，那于他则是一种致命的公然侮辱。
“不，”几天前我的一位朋友说道，“我从不去大歌剧院，”然后他不无自豪地补充道：“你知道吧，我压根儿对音乐就没感觉。”
“你别这么说！”我大声说道。
“真的！”他继续说道，“我根本分辨不出调子来。我分不清别人是在拉小提琴，还是在弹奏鸣曲。”
他好像对自己的每一项缺陷越说越自豪。最后他说，他家里养的一条狗对音乐比他还在行。每当他妻子或者来客弹起钢琴，小狗就会嚎叫起来，他形容那叫声非常“哀伤”，好像受到了伤害似的。而他本人从来不会如此。他说完之后，我发表了我自认为无伤大雅的看法：“我看，你会觉得自己也不怎么幽默吧，”我说，“乐感和幽默感一般是形影不离的。”我的朋友顿时气得脸色发青。“幽默感！”他说道，“我的幽默感！我缺少幽默感！哼，我敢说我的幽默感比这个城市里的任何一个人都要强，或者说比任何两个人的加起来都还要强！”接下来，他就转向对我进行恶毒的人身攻击。他说我的幽默感似乎完全枯竭了。离开我时他还在气得浑身直颤抖。
在我看来，令人愉快的幽默其本质好像总是这样的——必须不伤害人而且不含有恶意。我承认，我们所有人的身上都有某种古老而原始的邪恶幽默感或快意，会因别人遭殃而幸灾乐祸，这种魔鬼心理就像我们的原罪那样附在我们身上。看见一个人，尤其是那种昂首阔步的胖子，看那人突然踩到香蕉皮而摔倒了，这本不该是什么可笑可乐的事，但事实上的确会让人觉得好笑。如果有那么个人在结冰的湖面上优雅地绕圈滑行向别人炫耀其技艺，当他突然破冰落水而变成一只落汤鸡，那么每一个在场的人都会欢声大叫。而对原始的野蛮人来说，在这类情况下如发现滑倒的那人扭断了脖子或者落水后再也爬不上来，这才是笑话的精彩所在。我能想象出一群史前野人站在落水者失踪的冰窟窿边捧腹大笑的情景。假如那时有史前报纸之类东西的话，这一事件会以这样的标题见诸报端：“趣闻——某先生跌入冰窟且溺水而亡。”
然而，在文明的掩盖之下，我们的幽默感被削弱了。我们从类似的事情上已得不到多大乐趣了。不过，孩子们身上仍然大量地保留着这种原始的快乐感。我记得有一次看见两个小男孩在街边堆雪球。正当他们在收集积雪备用的时候，一位头戴丝制礼帽的老先生走了过来，从外表看，他属于那种“乐呵呵的老绅士”。一看见那两个男孩，他那金丝眼镜后面的眼睛里便流露出了慈爱的喜悦之情。他一边挥舞着手臂一边呼喊道：“喂，孩子们，来吧，随便用雪打我吧！随便打！”由于他太高兴了，他根本没注意到自己已跨出人行道走到了马路上。一辆快速驶过的马车把他撞翻在地，他仰天倒在了一大堆雪里。他躺在那儿气喘吁吁的，挣扎着想弄掉脸上和眼镜上的雪。那两个孩子拿起手中的雪球就朝他冲了过去。“随便打！”他们高喊道，“砸他！砸他！”
……
我们的确可以一言以蔽之：凡是讲故事让别人开心，都应该严守某些规则。很少有人意识到，要再现所讲故事那原汁原味的妙趣是多么的不容易。光是罗列“实情”是不足以使故事妙趣横生的。必须使用恰到好处的措词，而且每个词都应该各得其所。也许在一百个故事中，偶尔也会有一个根本无需叙述技巧的。这种故事在结尾处突然急转直下或出人意外，其幽默因而得以淋漓尽致地呈现出来——无论其讲述者多么笨拙，都不会做得太糟糕。我们不妨举一个众所周知的例子——几乎人人都听过这个故事，版本或许略有不同。“有一次，著名喜剧演员乔治·格罗史密斯颇感身体不适，便去看医生。恰巧医生也像其他人一样，虽然经常看他演戏，却从没见过他卸装后的模样，因此没有认出他来。医生给病人检查，看了舌头，探了脉搏，还听诊了肺部，然后摇了摇头说：‘您什么病也没有，先生，只不过因工作过多、操心太多而过度劳累了。您需要的是休息和娱乐。好好放松一夜，到萨瓦去看看乔治·格罗史密斯的演出吧。’‘谢谢您，’病人回答说，‘我就是乔治·格罗史密斯。’”
……
毫无疑问，爱讲故事的习惯主要是由于人们潜意识就不把幽默当一回事——我指的是，他们低估了“制造幽默”的难度。由于其结果是轻松快乐的，因此他们误以为其过程必定也是如此。很少有人意识到，欧 文·西曼在《笨拙》上发表的一首“滑稽诗”要比坎特伯雷大主教的一篇布道文难写得多。马克·吐温的《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》要比康德的《纯粹理性批判》伟大得多。查尔斯·狄更斯所塑造的匹克威克先生在提高人类的情操方面——我是非常郑重地说的——要比纽曼主教的颂诗《慈光引领》贡献大得多。纽曼只是在黑暗的悲惨世界里呼求光明，而狄更斯却给予了这种光明。
不过，在我们所说的幽默的背后以及超乎其上还存在更深远的意义，唯有极少数有心人，凭其本能或通过苦苦求索，曾对其作一番思考。以世界上最优秀、最伟大的幽默作品而言，幽默也许是我们人类文明的最高成就。在此，我们想到的不是喜剧演员那种仅仅把人逗得狂笑的喜剧效果，也不是杂耍剧中黑脸笑匠的精彩表演，而是由一代人中仅能产生一两位大师所创造的、能照亮能拔高我们文学境界的那种真正的伟大的幽默。这种幽默不再依赖纯粹插科打浑耍嘴皮，也不再疯言疯语以无厘头伎俩来使我们感到“滑稽”。它深深地植根于生活本身的深层反差之中：我们的期望是一回事，而实际结果却完全是另一回事。今天的渴望和焦虑令我们寝食难安，而明日它们却已化为乌有。无论火烧火燎的痛苦，还是如切如割的悲伤，在温柔的岁月回想中总会被轻描淡写。回首往日历程，悲欢离合历历在目，而我们已安然度过，于是我们会热泪涟涟地露出微笑，有如年迈的老人悲欢交集地回忆起儿时那怒气冲冲的争吵。由此可见，从更广的意义上来说，幽默与感伤是交织相融的，直至两者浑然一体。历代的幽默都体现了泪水与欢笑交融这一传统，而这正是我们人类的命运。
里柯克二十几岁就开始写作幽默小品。他的第一部幽默小品集子（其中收集了他于1891年至1899年期间所写的作品）出版于1910年，当时他已经40岁了。此后他便笔耕不辍，虽也写过一些其他形式的文学作品如诗歌、剧本、传记以及文学理论等，但他本人最喜爱的，也写得最多的还是幽默小品，共有将近30个集子。里柯克的幽默是一种淡淡的、含蓄的幽默，他不是靠奇特、滑稽的故事情节来把读者逗得哈哈大笑，而是善于从平淡无奇的日常生活中提炼出一些为大家司空见惯却又往往熟视无睹的可笑的和不合理的东西加以放大后呈现在读者面前，让他们产生共鸣而露出会心的微笑或无奈的苦笑。本期节选的这篇《幽默之我见》语言风趣、十分耐人回味，值得细细品读一番。
Until two weeks ago I might have taken my pen in hand to write about humour with the confident air of an 1)acknowledged professional. But that time is past. Such claim as I had has been taken from me. In fact I stand unmasked. An English reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said of my writing, “What is there, after all, in Professor Leacock’s humour but a rather ingenious mixture of 2)hyperbole and 3)myosis?”
The man was right. How he 4)stumbled upon this trade secret I do not know. But I am willing to admit, since the truth is out, that it has long been my custom in preparing an article of a humorous nature to go down to the cellar and mix up half a gallon of myosis with a pint of hyperbole. If I want to give the article a 5)decidedly literary character, I find it well to put in about half a pint of 6)paresis. The whole thing is amazingly simple. But I only mention this by way of introduction and to7)dispel any idea that I am 8)conceited enough to write about humour, with the professional authority of [1]Ella Wheeler Wilcox writing about love, or [2]Eva Tanguay talking about dancing.
All that I dare claim is that I have as much sense of humour as other people. And, oddly enough, I notice that everybody else makes this same claim. Any man will admit, if need be, that his sight is not good, or that he cannot swim, or shoots badly with a rifle, but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him a mortal 9)affront.
“No,” said a friend of mine the other day, “I never go to Grand Opera,” and then he added with an air of pride, “You see, I have absolutely no ear for music.”
“You don’t say so!” I exclaimed.
“None!” he went on. “I can’t tell one tune from another. I can’t tell whether a man is tuning a violin or playing a sonata.”
He seemed to get prouder and prouder over each item of his own deficiency. He ended by saying that he had a dog at his house that had a far better ear for music than he had. As soon as his wife or any visitor started to play the piano the dog always began to howl—10)plaintively, he said—as if it were hurt. He himself never did this. When he had finished I made what I thought a harmless comment. “I suppose,” I said, “that you find your sense of humour deficient in the same way: the two generally go together.” My friend was 11)livid with rage in a moment. “Sense of humour!” he said. “My sense of humour! Me without a sense of humour! 12)Why, I suppose I’ve a keener sense of humour than any man, or any two men, in this city!” From that he turned to bitter personal attack. He said that my sense of humour seemed to have withered altogether. He left me, still quivering with indignation.
To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice. I admit that there is in all of us a certain 13)vein of the old original 14)demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin. It ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and 15)pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin. But it is. When a skater on a pond who is describing graceful circles, and showing off before the crowd, breaks through the ice and 16)gets a ducking, everybody shouts with joy. To the original 17)savage, the18)cream of the joke in such cases was found if the man who slipped broke his neck, or the man who went through the ice never came up again. I can imagine a group of 19)prehistoric men standing round the ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing till their sides split. If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric newspaper, the affair would have headed up: “Amusing Incident. Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and Is Drowned.”
But our sense of humour under civilisation has been weakened. Much of the fun of this sort of thing has been lost on us. Children, however, still retain a large share of this primitive sense of enjoyment. I remember once watching two little boys making snow-balls at the side of the street and getting ready a little store of them to use. As they worked, there came along an old man wearing a 20)silk hat and belonging by appearance to the class of “jolly old gentlemen.” When he saw the boys his gold spectacles gleamed with kindly enjoyment. He began waving his arms and calling, “Now, then, boys, free shot at me! Free shot!” In his 21)gaiety he had, without noticing it, 22)edged himself over the sidewalk on to the street. An 23)express cart collided with him and knocked him over on his back in a heap of snow. He lay there gasping and trying to get the snow off his face and spectacles. The boys gathered up their snow-balls and took a run toward him. “Free shot!” they yelled. “24)Soak him! Soak him!”
…
One can indeed make the 25)sweeping assertion that the telling of stories as a mode of amusing others ought to be kept within strict limits. Few people realise how extremely difficult it is to tell a story so as to reproduce the real fun of it. The mere “facts” of a story seldom make it funny. It needs the right words, with every word in its proper place. Here and there, perhaps once in a hundred times, a story turns up which needs no telling. The humour of it turns so completely on a sudden twist or 26)incongruity in the 27)denouement of it that no narrator, however clumsy, can altogether28)fumble it. Take, for example, this well-known instance—a story which, in one form or other, everybody has heard. “[3]George Grossmith, the famous comedian, was once badly 29)run down and went to consult a doctor. It happened that the doctor, though, like everybody else, he had often seen Grossmith on the stage, had never seen him without his make-up and did not 30)know him by sight. He examined his patient, looked at his tongue, felt his pulse and tapped his lungs. Then he shook his head. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, sir,’ he said, ‘except that you’re run down from overwork and worry. You need rest and amusement. Take a night off and go and see George Grossmith at the 31)Savoy.’ ‘Thank you,’ said the patient, ‘I am George Grossmith.’”
…
No doubt the story-telling habit owes much to the fact that ordinary people, quite unconsciously, rate humour very low: I mean, they underestimate the difficulty of “making humour.” Because the result is gay and light, they think the process must be. Few people would realise that it is much harder to write one of [4]Owen Seaman’s “funny” poems in Punch than to write one of the [5]Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermons. Mark Twain’s[6]Huckleberry Finn is a greater work than [7]Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and [8]Charles Dickens’s creation of )[9]Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race—I say it 32)in all seriousness—than [10]Cardinal Newman’s Lead, Kindly Light, Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
But the deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humour is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world’s humour, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilisation. One thinks here not of the mere 33)spasmodic effects of the comic artist or the 34)blackface expert of the 35)vaudeville show, but of the really great humour which, once or twice in a generation at best, illuminates and elevates our literature. It is no longer dependent upon the mere trick and 36)quibble of words, or the odd and meaningless incongruities in things that strike us as “funny.” Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and 37)fretful anxieties of today that fade into nothingness tomorrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle 38)retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. And here, in its larger aspect, humour is blended with 39)pathos till the two are one, and represent, as they have in every age, the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our 40)lot on earth.
若是在两个星期之前让我来谈幽默，我会带着公认的行家所特有的自信提笔挥就。可现在不同了。那样的声势已消散。事实上，我的“面具”被揭穿了。一位英国评论家在某本文学杂志上——只要一说出该杂志的名字，便无人敢起来反驳——评论我的作品说：“里柯克教授的幽默充其量不过是‘夸张法’和‘缩小术’的巧妙杂揉，除此之外还有什么呢？”
他说对了。至于他是如何碰巧发现这一商业机密的，我无从知道。但既然他已一语道破，我也甘愿承认我长期以来的习惯做法就是：每逢要写幽默文章，我就到地窖里去，把半加仑“缩小剂”和一品脱“夸张剂”混合起来。而假如想赋予文章以明显的文学感，我发现最好是再往其中掺入半品脱局部麻醉剂。整个制作过程简单得惊人。我把这一秘诀公之于众，旨在说明情况并避免别人以为我妄自尊大，竟敢以行家里手的身份来谈论幽默，就像埃拉·威勒·威尔柯克斯论述爱情，或者伊娃·坦奎谈论舞蹈那样。
我唯一敢声称的是，我的幽默感不亚于世上任何人。非常奇怪的是，我注意到别人也都这样表态。如有需要，任何人都愿意承认自己视力不好，或者不会游泳，或者枪法很糟糕，但假如你说他缺乏幽默感，那于他则是一种致命的公然侮辱。
“不，”几天前我的一位朋友说道，“我从不去大歌剧院，”然后他不无自豪地补充道：“你知道吧，我压根儿对音乐就没感觉。”
“你别这么说！”我大声说道。
“真的！”他继续说道，“我根本分辨不出调子来。我分不清别人是在拉小提琴，还是在弹奏鸣曲。”
他好像对自己的每一项缺陷越说越自豪。最后他说，他家里养的一条狗对音乐比他还在行。每当他妻子或者来客弹起钢琴，小狗就会嚎叫起来，他形容那叫声非常“哀伤”，好像受到了伤害似的。而他本人从来不会如此。他说完之后，我发表了我自认为无伤大雅的看法：“我看，你会觉得自己也不怎么幽默吧，”我说，“乐感和幽默感一般是形影不离的。”我的朋友顿时气得脸色发青。“幽默感！”他说道，“我的幽默感！我缺少幽默感！哼，我敢说我的幽默感比这个城市里的任何一个人都要强，或者说比任何两个人的加起来都还要强！”接下来，他就转向对我进行恶毒的人身攻击。他说我的幽默感似乎完全枯竭了。离开我时他还在气得浑身直颤抖。
在我看来，令人愉快的幽默其本质好像总是这样的——必须不伤害人而且不含有恶意。我承认，我们所有人的身上都有某种古老而原始的邪恶幽默感或快意，会因别人遭殃而幸灾乐祸，这种魔鬼心理就像我们的原罪那样附在我们身上。看见一个人，尤其是那种昂首阔步的胖子，看那人突然踩到香蕉皮而摔倒了，这本不该是什么可笑可乐的事，但事实上的确会让人觉得好笑。如果有那么个人在结冰的湖面上优雅地绕圈滑行向别人炫耀其技艺，当他突然破冰落水而变成一只落汤鸡，那么每一个在场的人都会欢声大叫。而对原始的野蛮人来说，在这类情况下如发现滑倒的那人扭断了脖子或者落水后再也爬不上来，这才是笑话的精彩所在。我能想象出一群史前野人站在落水者失踪的冰窟窿边捧腹大笑的情景。假如那时有史前报纸之类东西的话，这一事件会以这样的标题见诸报端：“趣闻——某先生跌入冰窟且溺水而亡。”
然而，在文明的掩盖之下，我们的幽默感被削弱了。我们从类似的事情上已得不到多大乐趣了。不过，孩子们身上仍然大量地保留着这种原始的快乐感。我记得有一次看见两个小男孩在街边堆雪球。正当他们在收集积雪备用的时候，一位头戴丝制礼帽的老先生走了过来，从外表看，他属于那种“乐呵呵的老绅士”。一看见那两个男孩，他那金丝眼镜后面的眼睛里便流露出了慈爱的喜悦之情。他一边挥舞着手臂一边呼喊道：“喂，孩子们，来吧，随便用雪打我吧！随便打！”由于他太高兴了，他根本没注意到自己已跨出人行道走到了马路上。一辆快速驶过的马车把他撞翻在地，他仰天倒在了一大堆雪里。他躺在那儿气喘吁吁的，挣扎着想弄掉脸上和眼镜上的雪。那两个孩子拿起手中的雪球就朝他冲了过去。“随便打！”他们高喊道，“砸他！砸他！”
……
我们的确可以一言以蔽之：凡是讲故事让别人开心，都应该严守某些规则。很少有人意识到，要再现所讲故事那原汁原味的妙趣是多么的不容易。光是罗列“实情”是不足以使故事妙趣横生的。必须使用恰到好处的措词，而且每个词都应该各得其所。也许在一百个故事中，偶尔也会有一个根本无需叙述技巧的。这种故事在结尾处突然急转直下或出人意外，其幽默因而得以淋漓尽致地呈现出来——无论其讲述者多么笨拙，都不会做得太糟糕。我们不妨举一个众所周知的例子——几乎人人都听过这个故事，版本或许略有不同。“有一次，著名喜剧演员乔治·格罗史密斯颇感身体不适，便去看医生。恰巧医生也像其他人一样，虽然经常看他演戏，却从没见过他卸装后的模样，因此没有认出他来。医生给病人检查，看了舌头，探了脉搏，还听诊了肺部，然后摇了摇头说：‘您什么病也没有，先生，只不过因工作过多、操心太多而过度劳累了。您需要的是休息和娱乐。好好放松一夜，到萨瓦去看看乔治·格罗史密斯的演出吧。’‘谢谢您，’病人回答说，‘我就是乔治·格罗史密斯。’”
……
毫无疑问，爱讲故事的习惯主要是由于人们潜意识就不把幽默当一回事——我指的是，他们低估了“制造幽默”的难度。由于其结果是轻松快乐的，因此他们误以为其过程必定也是如此。很少有人意识到，欧 文·西曼在《笨拙》上发表的一首“滑稽诗”要比坎特伯雷大主教的一篇布道文难写得多。马克·吐温的《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》要比康德的《纯粹理性批判》伟大得多。查尔斯·狄更斯所塑造的匹克威克先生在提高人类的情操方面——我是非常郑重地说的——要比纽曼主教的颂诗《慈光引领》贡献大得多。纽曼只是在黑暗的悲惨世界里呼求光明，而狄更斯却给予了这种光明。
不过，在我们所说的幽默的背后以及超乎其上还存在更深远的意义，唯有极少数有心人，凭其本能或通过苦苦求索，曾对其作一番思考。以世界上最优秀、最伟大的幽默作品而言，幽默也许是我们人类文明的最高成就。在此，我们想到的不是喜剧演员那种仅仅把人逗得狂笑的喜剧效果，也不是杂耍剧中黑脸笑匠的精彩表演，而是由一代人中仅能产生一两位大师所创造的、能照亮能拔高我们文学境界的那种真正的伟大的幽默。这种幽默不再依赖纯粹插科打浑耍嘴皮，也不再疯言疯语以无厘头伎俩来使我们感到“滑稽”。它深深地植根于生活本身的深层反差之中：我们的期望是一回事，而实际结果却完全是另一回事。今天的渴望和焦虑令我们寝食难安，而明日它们却已化为乌有。无论火烧火燎的痛苦，还是如切如割的悲伤，在温柔的岁月回想中总会被轻描淡写。回首往日历程，悲欢离合历历在目，而我们已安然度过，于是我们会热泪涟涟地露出微笑，有如年迈的老人悲欢交集地回忆起儿时那怒气冲冲的争吵。由此可见，从更广的意义上来说，幽默与感伤是交织相融的，直至两者浑然一体。历代的幽默都体现了泪水与欢笑交融这一传统，而这正是我们人类的命运。