The Interval of Comedy

A couple of things came to mind after my last post.  First, when Berman speaks of an 'interval', it calls to my mind a moment from the Book of the New Sun, in which Severian has become the Autarch, but is lamed and weak. He travels up the Gyoll to Nessus on a ship of ordinary men, and finds them comical.  He declares that his story has reached 'the interval of comedy.'

The other thing that happened was that I listened to the Partially Examined Life podcast #57, reading a Henri Bergson essay from [1900] on comedy. (This is such an enjoyable and informative podcast - if you every listen to podcasts, you should check this one out.)  Bergson argues that comedy arises from a perceiving a rigidity, an automatism that has become irrational to you.  The sense of humour begins as something darker and more predatory:

In this sense, laughter cannot be absolutely just. Nor should it be
kind-hearted either. Its function is to intimidate by humiliating. Now,
it would not succeed in doing this, had not nature implanted for that
very purpose, even in the best of men, a spark of spitefulness or, at
all events, of mischief.

Bergson points out an important social function:

Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it
must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is
directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken
with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy
or kindness.
Shall we be told that the motive, at all events; may be a good one,
that we often punish because we love, and that laughter, by checking
the outer manifestations of certain failings, thus causes the person
laughed at to correct these failings and thereby improve himself
inwardly?
Much might be said on this point. As a general rule, and speaking
roughly, laughter doubtless exercises a useful function. Indeed, the
whole of our analysis points to this fact. But it does not therefore
follow that laughter always hits the mark or is invariably inspired by
sentiments of kindness or even of justice. 

And as Severian sees the behaviour of the common men around him as automatic, and comical, he shows he has their measure and is their master.

But I think laughter would be the nicest possible face to put on a coming interval of inequality. And if there is inequality but the poor are never too poor and the rich will only treat us as a comedy, perhaps we can bump through that interval together ok.