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.
不少分析家試圖剖析幽默，他們所著的詮釋性文獻，我也閱讀過一些，但對理解幽默，都幫助不大。幽默像青蛙一樣，是能夠解剖的，只是實驗品會於過程中死去，而其內部，只有單純的理性思維概念，相當掃人興致。
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.
日前我在一間紀錄片影院，看到一條片段，是個男人將肥皂泡，吹到前所未見的高。他簡直成為了美國業內的精英，並將吹皂泡的藝術，推至完美境界；他將皂泡弄得極其精美，先吹大兩倍，再放大四倍，甚至能套自己進肥皂泡裡。這種效果並不好看。皂泡吹得太大，就怎都不會好看；表演者一時從皂泡跳出跳入，一時賣弄各種索然無味的把戲，看了只令人生厭。幽默跟這點有些相似，它經不起別人無限放大，也受不了別人又截又捅。幽默很是脆弱，又頗為飄忽，我們必須尊重這一點。本質上，幽默是個大奧祕。當一個人笑得抽搐痙攣、笑聲變得歇斯底里，無法自制，這時失控的他，與打嗝打得發抖或打不出噴嚏，已是如出一轍。
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.
談起幽默家，人們最常提到的，是他們內心其實非常憂傷，是心碎腸斷的小丑。道理是對的，只是表述有誤。我認為，更準確的說法，應該是每個人生命中，都流有一股憂緒，而幽默家或許就是比一般人，較有這方面的觸覺，並懂得主動和積極地，從中尋求補償。幽默家是靠煩惱發財的，他們總能從煩惱手上討回賠償。他們憑籍堅毅意志，樂觀地忍受痛苦，且心裡很清楚，它們將成為豐碩的回報。我們見他們和外語泥漿摔角、跟燙衣板和塞掉的排水管鬥個你死我活、又遭受窄靴的折磨⋯⋯便知道他們懂得化苦難為盈利，並以某種既非虛構、也非現實的形態呈現出來。這些哭笑不得的情境，在令人發笑的華美皮層下，是股流露種種悲哀的暗湧。
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.
其實某程度上，誰都是患有抑鬱症的躁狂者，時而狂喜，時而哀慟。我們當然不用成為幽默家，也能感受哀傷，或是意會這種心境。哭與笑的界線，往往十分微妙；假若一部幽作品，將一個人帶到情感失真的地步，且得出與預期中似乎相反的反應，那是因為幽默和詩歌一樣，常帶有弦外之音。幽默的舞台，是設在真理之烈火側旁的，所以觀眾有時也能感受到那道熱力。
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