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.

Gratuitous Gene Wolfe

From 'Citadel of the Autarch', p283.  Severian has attained the Autarchy, and is exploring the accumulated treasure of the  Autarch's rooms in Nessus.

... the most interesting of which was a mandragora in spirits.
The curcurbit in which it floated was about seven spans in height and half as wide; the homoncule itself no more than two spans tall.  When I tapped the glass it turned eyes like clouded beads toward me, eyes blinder far in appearance than Master Palaemon's.  I heard no sound when its lips twitched, yet I knew at once what words they shaped - and in some inexorable sense I felt the pale fluid in which the mandragora was immersed had become my own blood-tinged urine.
    'Why have you called me Autarch, from the contemplation of your world?'
   I asked 'Is it truly mine? I know now that there are seven continents, and none but a part of this are obedient to the hallowed phrases.'
  'You are the heir' the wizened thing said and turned, I could not tell if by accident or design, until it no longer faced me.
  I tapped the curcurbit again. 'And who are you?'
  'A being without parents, whose life is passed immersed in blood.'
  'Why such have I been!  We should be friends then, you and I, as two of similar backgrounds usually are.'
 'You jest.'
 'Not at all.  I feel a real sympathy for you, and I think we are more alike than you believe.'
  The tiny figure turned again until its little face looked up into my own. 'I wish that I might credit you, Autarch.'
 'I mean it. No one has ever accused me of being an honest man, and I've told lies enough when I thought they would serve my turn, but I'm quite sincere. If I can do anything for you, tell me what it is.'
 'Break the glass.'
 I hesitated. 'Won't you die?'
 'I have never lived. I will cease thinking. Break the glass.'
 'You do live.'
 'I neither grow, nor move, nor respond to any stimulus save thought, which is counted no response. I am incapable of propagating my kind, or any other. Break the glass.'
 'If you are indeed unliving, I would rather find some way to stir you to life.'
 'So much for brotherhood. When you were imprisoned here, Thecla, and that boy brought you the knife, why did you not look for more life then?'
 The blood burned in my cheek, and I lifted the ebony baculus, but I did not strike. 'Alive or dead, you have a penetrating intelligence. Thecla is the part of me most prone to anger.'
 'If you had inherited her glands with her memories, I would have succeeded.'
 'And you know that. How can you know so much, who are blind?'
 'The acts of coarse minds create minute vibrations that stir the waters of this bottle. I hear your thoughts.'
 'I notice that I hear yours. How is it that I hear them, and not others?'
 Looking now directly at the pinched face, which was lit by the sun's last shaft penetrating a dusty port, I could not be sure the lips moved at all. 'You hear yourself, as ever. You cannot hear others because your mind shrieks always, like an infant crying in a basket. Ah, I see you remember that.'
 'I remember a time long ago, when I was cold and hungry.  I lay upon my back, encircled by brown walls, and heard the sound of my own screams. Yes, I must have been an infant. Not old enough to crawl, I think. What am I thinking now?'
 'That I am but an unconscious exercise of your own power, as the Claw was. It is true, of course.  I was deformed, and died before birth, and have been kept here since in white brandy. Break the glass.'

Autarchy

Just a brief note of something I still need to know more about - J. Bernstein talked about Hegel using the word/concept autarchy.  You will recall that Gene Wolfe, another source for this blog, centered his surviving humanity in the Autarch, who rules the commonwealth from the House Absolute.

All roads lead to all roads.  It's so darn interesting.

Siri

Most of the news on Siri now is of the 'easter eggs' - the amusing, redundant flourishes of wit hidden in the verbal patterns.

In the Book of the New Sun, Severian travels for a man whose body is mostly metal, by name Jonas.

CoftheC: "By the time Jonas returned I had mastered my grief and was making a show of examining our mounts. "The black for you," he said, "and the cream for me, obviously. Though both of them look like they outvalue each of us, as the sailor said to the surgeon who took off his legs."

Later, in Citadel of the Autarch:
  "Jonas [] had a habit of speech. Whenever he had to say something unpleasant, he softened it, made a joke of it, by attributing it to some comic situation.  The first night we were here, when I asked you your name, you said 'I lost it somewhere, as the jaguar said, that had promised to guide the goat.'  Do you recall that?"
   He shook his head.  "I say a lot of foolish things."
   "It struck me as strange, because it was the kind of thing Jonas said, but he wouldn't have said it in that way unless he meant more by it than you seemed to.   I think he would have said 'That was the baskets story, that had been filled with water.' Something like that."
    I waited for him to speak, but he did not.
    "The jaguar ate the goat, of course.  Swallowed its flesh and cracked its bones, somewhere along the way."
    "Haven't you ever thought it might be a peculiarity of some town? Your friend might come from the same place I do."
    "It was a time, I think, and not a place,  Long ago, someone had to disarm fear - the fear that men of flesh and blood might feel when looking into a face of steel and glass."

Siri's banter is not an amusing afterthought.  It is the way to bring people into the practice of talking to their phone.  Conversing with your phone is as big a UI step change as multitouch.  Once again, Apple are to be congratulated.

(only other Siri info I have: Siri Keaton, protagonist of Blindsight by Peter Watts.)