-=[ COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES ]=-
Excerpted from All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton; an etext in progress, from an edition by John Lane Company, New York, 1909.
This etext was typed by Rob Szarka.
A writer in the Yorkshire Evening Post is very angry indeed with my performances in this column. His precise terms of reproach are, “Mr. G. K. Chesterton is not a humourist: not even a Cockney humourist.” I do not mind his saying that I am not a humourist—in which (to tell the truth) I think he is quite right. But I do resent his saying that I am not a Cockney. That envenomed arrow, I admit, went home. If a French writer said of me, “he is no metaphysician: not even an English metaphysician,” I could swallow the insult to my metaphysics, but I should feel angry about the insult to my country. So I do not urge that I am a humourist; but I do insist that I am a Cockney. If I were a humourist, I should certainly be a Cockney humourist; if I were a saint, I should certainly be a Cockney saint. I need not recite the splendid catalogue of Cockney saints who have written their names on our noble old City churches. I need not trouble you with the long list of the Cockney humourists who have discharged their bills (or failed to discharge them) in our noble old City taverns. We can weep together over the pathos of the poor Yorkshireman, whose county has never produced some humour not intelligble to the rest of the world. And we can smile together when he says that somebody or other is “not even” a Cockney humourist like Samuel Johnson or Charles Lamb. It is surely sufficiently obvious that all the best humour that exists in our language is Cockney humour. Chaucer was a Cockney; he had his house close to the Abbey. Dickens was a Cockney; he said he could not think without the London streets. The London taverns heard always the quaintest conversation, whether it was Ben Jonson’s at the Mermaid or Sam Johnson’s at the Cock. Even in our own time it may be noted that the most vital and genuine humour is still written about London. Of this type is the mild and humane irony which marks Mr. Pett Ridge’s studies of the small grey streets. Of this type is the simple but smashing laughter of the best tales of Mr. W. W. Jacobs, telling of the smoke and sparkle of the Thames. No; I concede that I am not a Cockney humourist. No; I am not worthy to be. Some time, after sad and strenuous after-lives; some time, after fierce and apocalyptic incarnations; in some strange world beyond the stars, I may become at last a Cockney humourist. In that potential paradise I may walk among the Cockney humourists, if not an equal, at least a companion. I may feel for a moment on my shoulder the hearty hand of Dryden and thread the labyrinths of the sweet insanity of Lamb. But that could only be if I were not only much cleverer, but much better than I am. Before I reach that sphere I shall have left behind, perhaps, the sphere that is inhabited by angels, and even passed that which is appropriated exclusively to the use of Yorkshiremen.
No; London is in this matter attacked upon its strongest ground. London is the largest of the bloated modern cities; London is the smokiest; London is the dirtiest; London is, if you will, the most sombre; London is, if you will, the most miserable. But London is certainly the most amusing and the most amused. You may prove that we have the most tragedy; the fact remains that we have the most comedy, that we have the most farce. We have at the very worst a splendid hypocrisy of humour. We conceal our sorrow behind a screaming derision. You speak of people who laugh through their tears; it is our boast that we only weep through our laughter. There remains always this great boast, perhaps the greatest boast that is possible to human nature. I mean the great boast that the most unhappy part of our population is also the most hilarious part. The poor can forget that social problem which we (the moderately rich) ought never to forget. Blessed are the poor; for they alone have not the poor always with them. The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic. They saw something delicate which they could only express by something indelicate. I remember that Mr. Max Beerbohm (who has every merit except democracy) attempted to analyse the jokes at which the mob laughs. He divided them into three sections: jokes about bodily humiliation, jokes about things alien, such as foreigners, and jokes about bad cheese. Mr. Max Beerbohn thought he understood the first two forms; but I am not sure that he did. In order to understand vulgar humour it is not enough to be humorous. One must also be vulgar, as I am. And in the first case it is surely obvious that it is not merely at the fact of something being hurt that we laugh (as I trust we do) when a Prime Minister sits on his hat. If that were so we should laugh whenever we saw a funeral. We do not laugh at the mere fact of something falling down; there is nothing humorous about leaves falling or the sun going down. When our house falls down we do not laugh. All the birds of the air might drop around us in a perpetual shower like a hailstorm without arousing a smile. If you really ask yourself why we laugh at a man sitting down suddenly in the street you will discover that the reason is not only recondite, but ultimately religious. All the jokes about men sitting down on their hats are really theological jokes; they are concerned with the Dual Nature of Man. They refer to the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.
Quite equally subtle and spiritual is the idea at the back of laughing at foreigners. It concerns the almost torturing mirth of a thing being like oneself and yet not like oneself. Nobody laughs at what is entirely foreign; nobody laughs at a palm tree. But it is funny to see the familiar image of God disguised behind the black beard of a Frenchman of the black face of a Negro. There is nothing funny in the sounds that are wholly inhuman, the howling of wild beasts or of the wind. But if a man begins to talk like oneself, but all the syllables come out different, then if one is a man one feels inclined to laugh, though if one is a gentleman one resists the inclination.
Mr. Max Beerbohm, I remember, professed to understand the first two forms of popular wit, but said that the third quite stumped him. He could not see why there should be anything funny about bad cheese. I can tell him at once. He has missed the idea because it is subtle and philosophical, and he was looking for something ignorant and foolish. Bad cheese is funny because it is (like the foreigner or the man fallen on the pavement) the type of the transition or transgression across a great mystical boundary. Bad cheese symbolises the change from the inorganic to the organic. Bad cheese symbolises the startling prodigy of matter taking on vitality. It symbolises the origin of life itself. And it is only about such solemn matters as the origin of life that the democracy condescends to joke. Thus, for instance, the democracy jokes about marriage, because marriage is a part of mankind. But the democracy would never deign to joke about Free Love, because Free Love is a piece of priggishness.
As a matter of fact, it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but it is true to the spirit. The vulgar joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact. For instance, it is not in the least true that mothers-in-law are as a class oppressive and intolerable; most of them are both devoted and useful. All the mothers-in-law I have ever had were admirable. Yet the legend of the comic papers is profoundly true. It draws attention to the fact that it is much harder to be a nice mother-in-law than to be nice in any other conceivable relation of life. The caricatures have drawn the worst mother-in-law a monster, by way of expressing the fact that the best mother-in-law is a problem. The same is true of the perpetual jokes in comic papers about shrewish wives and henpecked husbands. It is all a frantic exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration of a truth; whereas all the modern mouthings about oppressed women are the exaggerations of a falsehood. If you read even the best of the intellectuals of to-day you will find them saying that in the mass of the democracy the woman is the chattel of her lord, like his bath or his bed. But if you read the comic literature of the democracy you will find that the lord hides under the bed to escape the wrath of his chattel. This is not the fact, but it is much nearer the truth. Every man who is married knows quite well, not only that he does not regard his wife as a chattel, but that no man can conceivably ever have done so. The joke stands for an ultimate truth, and that is a subtle truth. It is not very easy to state correctly. It can, perhaps, be most correctly stated by saying that, even if the man is the head of the house, he knows he is the figure-head.
But the vulgar comic papers are so subtle and true that they are even prophetic. If you really want to know what is going to happen to the future of our democracy, do not read the modern sociological prophecies, do not read even Mr. Wells’s Utopias for this purpose, though you should certainly read them if you are fond of good honesty and good English. If you want to know what will happen, study the pages of Snaps or Patchy Bits as if they were the dark tablets graven with the oracles of the gods. For, mean and gross as they are, in all seriousness, they contain what is entirely absent from all Utopias and all the sociological conjectures of our time: they contain some hint of the actual habits and manifest desires of the English people. If we are really to find out what the democracy will ultimately do with itself, we shall surely find it, not in the literature which studies the people, but in the literature which the people studies.
I can give two chance cases in which the common or Cockney joke was a much better prophecy than the careful observations of the most cultured observer. When England was agitated, previous to the last General Election, about the existence of Chinese labour, there was a distinct difference between the tone of the politicians and the tone of the populace. The politicians who disapproved of Chinese labour were most careful to explain that they did not in any sense disapprove of Chinese. According to them, it was a pure question of legal propriety, of whether certain clauses in the contract of indenture were not inconsistent with our constitutional traditions: according to them, the case would have been the same if the people had been Kaffirs or Englishmen. It all sounded wonderfully enlightened and lucid; and in comparison the popular joke looked, of course, very poor. For the popular joke against the Chinese labourers was simply that they were Chinese; it was an objection to an alien type; the popular papers were full of gibes about pigtails and yellow faces. It seemed that the Liberal politicians were raising an intellectual objection to a doubtful document of State; while it seemed that the Radical populace were merely roaring with idiotic laughter at the sight of a Chinaman’s clothes. But the popular instinct was justified, for the vices revealed were Chinese vices.
But there is another case more pleasant and more up to date. The popular papers always persisted in representing the New Woman or the Suffragette as an ugly woman, fat, in spectacles, with bulging clothes, and generally falling off a bicycle. As a matter of plain external fact, there was not a word of truth in this. The leaders of the movement of female emancipation are not at all ugly; most of them are extraordinarily good looking. Nor are they indifferent to art or decorative costume; many of them are alarmingly attached to these things. Yet the popular instinct was right. For the popular instinct was that in this movement, rightly or wrongly, there was an element of indifference to female dignity, of a quite new willingness of women to be grotesque. These women did truly despise the pontifical quality of woman. And in our streets and around our Parliament we have seen the stately woman of art and culture turn into the comic woman of Comic Bits. And whether we think the exhibition justifiable or not, the prophecy of the comic papers is justified; the healthy and vulgar masses were conscious of a hidden enemy to their traditions who has now come out into the daylight, that the scriptures might be fulfilled. For the two things that a healthy person hates most between heaven and hell are a woman who is not dignified and a man who is.
Part of an etext in progress by Rob Szarka.
-=[ COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES ]=-
Excerpted from All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton; an etext in progress, from an edition by John Lane Company, New York, 1909.
This etext was typed by Rob Szarka.
A writer in the Yorkshire Evening Post is very angry indeed with my performances in this column. His precise terms of reproach are, “Mr. G. K. Chesterton is not a humourist: not even a Cockney humourist.” I do not mind his saying that I am not a humourist—in which (to tell the truth) I think he is quite right. But I do resent his saying that I am not a Cockney. That envenomed arrow, I admit, went home. If a French writer said of me, “he is no metaphysician: not even an English metaphysician,” I could swallow the insult to my metaphysics, but I should feel angry about the insult to my country. So I do not urge that I am a humourist; but I do insist that I am a Cockney. If I were a humourist, I should certainly be a Cockney humourist; if I were a saint, I should certainly be a Cockney saint. I need not recite the splendid catalogue of Cockney saints who have written their names on our noble old City churches. I need not trouble you with the long list of the Cockney humourists who have discharged their bills (or failed to discharge them) in our noble old City taverns. We can weep together over the pathos of the poor Yorkshireman, whose county has never produced some humour not intelligble to the rest of the world. And we can smile together when he says that somebody or other is “not even” a Cockney humourist like Samuel Johnson or Charles Lamb. It is surely sufficiently obvious that all the best humour that exists in our language is Cockney humour. Chaucer was a Cockney; he had his house close to the Abbey. Dickens was a Cockney; he said he could not think without the London streets. The London taverns heard always the quaintest conversation, whether it was Ben Jonson’s at the Mermaid or Sam Johnson’s at the Cock. Even in our own time it may be noted that the most vital and genuine humour is still written about London. Of this type is the mild and humane irony which marks Mr. Pett Ridge’s studies of the small grey streets. Of this type is the simple but smashing laughter of the best tales of Mr. W. W. Jacobs, telling of the smoke and sparkle of the Thames. No; I concede that I am not a Cockney humourist. No; I am not worthy to be. Some time, after sad and strenuous after-lives; some time, after fierce and apocalyptic incarnations; in some strange world beyond the stars, I may become at last a Cockney humourist. In that potential paradise I may walk among the Cockney humourists, if not an equal, at least a companion. I may feel for a moment on my shoulder the hearty hand of Dryden and thread the labyrinths of the sweet insanity of Lamb. But that could only be if I were not only much cleverer, but much better than I am. Before I reach that sphere I shall have left behind, perhaps, the sphere that is inhabited by angels, and even passed that which is appropriated exclusively to the use of Yorkshiremen.
No; London is in this matter attacked upon its strongest ground. London is the largest of the bloated modern cities; London is the smokiest; London is the dirtiest; London is, if you will, the most sombre; London is, if you will, the most miserable. But London is certainly the most amusing and the most amused. You may prove that we have the most tragedy; the fact remains that we have the most comedy, that we have the most farce. We have at the very worst a splendid hypocrisy of humour. We conceal our sorrow behind a screaming derision. You speak of people who laugh through their tears; it is our boast that we only weep through our laughter. There remains always this great boast, perhaps the greatest boast that is possible to human nature. I mean the great boast that the most unhappy part of our population is also the most hilarious part. The poor can forget that social problem which we (the moderately rich) ought never to forget. Blessed are the poor; for they alone have not the poor always with them. The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
-=[ I COCKNEY E LE LORO BATTUTE ]=-
Tratto da All Things Considered di G. K. Chesterton; un etext in corso d’opera, da un’edizione della John Lane Company, New York, 1909.
Questo etext è stato battuto a macchina da Rob Szarka.
Uno scrittore dello Yorkshire Evening Post è davvero molto in collera per le mie prestazioni in questa rubrica. I suoi precisi termini di rimprovero sono: «Il signor G. K. Chesterton non è un umorista: nemmeno un umorista cockney». Non mi dispiace che egli dica che non sono un umorista… nel che (a dire la verità) credo che abbia perfettamente ragione. Ma mi risento che dica che non sono un cockney. Quella freccia avvelenata, lo ammetto, andò a segno. Se uno scrittore francese dicesse di me: «non è un metafisico: nemmeno un metafisico inglese», potrei inghiottire l’insulto alla mia metafisica, ma mi adirerei per l’insulto al mio paese. Perciò non sostengo di essere un umorista; ma insisto di essere un cockney. Se fossi un umorista, sarei certamente un umorista cockney; se fossi un santo, sarei certamente un santo cockney. Non occorre che reciti lo splendido catalogo dei santi cockney che hanno scritto i loro nomi sulle nostre nobili vecchie chiese della City. Non occorre che vi importuni con la lunga lista degli umoristi cockney che hanno saldato i loro conti (o non li hanno saldati) nelle nostre nobili vecchie taverne della City. Possiamo piangere insieme sul patetico del povero uomo dello Yorkshire, la cui contea non ha mai prodotto un umorismo non intelligibile al resto del mondo. E possiamo sorridere insieme quando dice che il tale o il tal altro non è «nemmeno» un umorista cockney come Samuel Johnson o Charles Lamb. È di certo sufficientemente ovvio che tutto il miglior umorismo che esiste nella nostra lingua è umorismo cockney. Chaucer era un cockney; aveva la sua casa vicino all’Abbazia. Dickens era un cockney; diceva di non saper pensare senza le strade di Londra. Le taverne di Londra udirono sempre le conversazioni più pittoresche, fosse quella di Ben Jonson alla Sirena o quella di Sam Johnson al Cock. Persino ai nostri giorni si può notare che l’umorismo più vitale e genuino si scrive ancora su Londra. Di questo tipo è la mite e umana ironia che contraddistingue gli studi del signor Pett Ridge sulle piccole strade grigie. Di questo tipo è il riso semplice ma travolgente dei migliori racconti del signor W. W. Jacobs, che narrano del fumo e dello scintillio del Tamigi. No; concedo di non essere un umorista cockney. No; non ne sono degno. Un giorno, dopo tristi e faticose vite ulteriori; un giorno, dopo feroci e apocalittiche incarnazioni; in qualche strano mondo al di là delle stelle, potrò infine diventare un umorista cockney. In quel paradiso potenziale potrò camminare tra gli umoristi cockney, se non da pari, almeno da compagno. Potrò sentire per un momento sulla mia spalla la calorosa mano di Dryden e percorrere i labirinti della dolce follia di Lamb. Ma ciò potrebbe accadere solo se io fossi non soltanto molto più intelligente, ma molto migliore di quel che sono. Prima di raggiungere quella sfera avrò lasciato dietro di me, forse, la sfera abitata dagli angeli, e avrò persino oltrepassato quella riservata esclusivamente all’uso degli uomini dello Yorkshire.
No; Londra è in questa faccenda attaccata sul suo terreno più saldo. Londra è la più grande delle gonfie città moderne; Londra è la più fumosa; Londra è la più sudicia; Londra è, se volete, la più tetra; Londra è, se volete, la più misera. Ma Londra è di certo la più divertente e la più divertita. Potrete dimostrare che abbiamo la maggior tragedia; resta il fatto che abbiamo la maggior commedia, che abbiamo la maggior farsa. Abbiamo, nella peggiore delle ipotesi, una splendida ipocrisia di umorismo. Nascondiamo il nostro dolore dietro una derisione sguaiata. Voi parlate di gente che ride tra le lacrime; è nostro vanto piangere soltanto tra le risate. Rimane sempre questo grande vanto, forse il più grande vanto possibile alla natura umana. Intendo il grande vanto che la parte più infelice della nostra popolazione sia anche la più ilare. I poveri sanno dimenticare quel problema sociale che noi (i moderatamente ricchi) non dovremmo mai dimenticare. Beati i poveri; poiché essi soli non hanno sempre i poveri con sé. Il povero onesto può talvolta dimenticare la povertà. Il ricco onesto non può mai dimenticarla.
I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic. They saw something delicate which they could only express by something indelicate. I remember that Mr. Max Beerbohm (who has every merit except democracy) attempted to analyse the jokes at which the mob laughs. He divided them into three sections: jokes about bodily humiliation, jokes about things alien, such as foreigners, and jokes about bad cheese. Mr. Max Beerbohn thought he understood the first two forms; but I am not sure that he did. In order to understand vulgar humour it is not enough to be humorous. One must also be vulgar, as I am. And in the first case it is surely obvious that it is not merely at the fact of something being hurt that we laugh (as I trust we do) when a Prime Minister sits on his hat. If that were so we should laugh whenever we saw a funeral. We do not laugh at the mere fact of something falling down; there is nothing humorous about leaves falling or the sun going down. When our house falls down we do not laugh. All the birds of the air might drop around us in a perpetual shower like a hailstorm without arousing a smile. If you really ask yourself why we laugh at a man sitting down suddenly in the street you will discover that the reason is not only recondite, but ultimately religious. All the jokes about men sitting down on their hats are really theological jokes; they are concerned with the Dual Nature of Man. They refer to the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.
Quite equally subtle and spiritual is the idea at the back of laughing at foreigners. It concerns the almost torturing mirth of a thing being like oneself and yet not like oneself. Nobody laughs at what is entirely foreign; nobody laughs at a palm tree. But it is funny to see the familiar image of God disguised behind the black beard of a Frenchman of the black face of a Negro. There is nothing funny in the sounds that are wholly inhuman, the howling of wild beasts or of the wind. But if a man begins to talk like oneself, but all the syllables come out different, then if one is a man one feels inclined to laugh, though if one is a gentleman one resists the inclination.
Mr. Max Beerbohm, I remember, professed to understand the first two forms of popular wit, but said that the third quite stumped him. He could not see why there should be anything funny about bad cheese. I can tell him at once. He has missed the idea because it is subtle and philosophical, and he was looking for something ignorant and foolish. Bad cheese is funny because it is (like the foreigner or the man fallen on the pavement) the type of the transition or transgression across a great mystical boundary. Bad cheese symbolises the change from the inorganic to the organic. Bad cheese symbolises the startling prodigy of matter taking on vitality. It symbolises the origin of life itself. And it is only about such solemn matters as the origin of life that the democracy condescends to joke. Thus, for instance, the democracy jokes about marriage, because marriage is a part of mankind. But the democracy would never deign to joke about Free Love, because Free Love is a piece of priggishness.
As a matter of fact, it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but it is true to the spirit. The vulgar joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact. For instance, it is not in the least true that mothers-in-law are as a class oppressive and intolerable; most of them are both devoted and useful. All the mothers-in-law I have ever had were admirable. Yet the legend of the comic papers is profoundly true. It draws attention to the fact that it is much harder to be a nice mother-in-law than to be nice in any other conceivable relation of life. The caricatures have drawn the worst mother-in-law a monster, by way of expressing the fact that the best mother-in-law is a problem. The same is true of the perpetual jokes in comic papers about shrewish wives and henpecked husbands. It is all a frantic exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration of a truth; whereas all the modern mouthings about oppressed women are the exaggerations of a falsehood. If you read even the best of the intellectuals of to-day you will find them saying that in the mass of the democracy the woman is the chattel of her lord, like his bath or his bed. But if you read the comic literature of the democracy you will find that the lord hides under the bed to escape the wrath of his chattel. This is not the fact, but it is much nearer the truth. Every man who is married knows quite well, not only that he does not regard his wife as a chattel, but that no man can conceivably ever have done so. The joke stands for an ultimate truth, and that is a subtle truth. It is not very easy to state correctly. It can, perhaps, be most correctly stated by saying that, even if the man is the head of the house, he knows he is the figure-head.
Credo fermamente nel valore di tutte le nozioni volgari, e in special modo delle barzellette volgari. Quando avete afferrato una barzelletta volgare, potete essere certi di aver afferrato un’idea sottile e spirituale. Gli uomini che fecero la battuta videro qualcosa di profondo che non riuscivano a esprimere se non con qualcosa di sciocco ed enfatico. Videro qualcosa di delicato che potevano esprimere solo con qualcosa di indelicato. Ricordo che il signor Max Beerbohm (il quale possiede ogni merito tranne quello della democrazia) tentò di analizzare le facezie di cui ride la folla. Le divise in tre categorie: le facezie sull’umiliazione corporea, le facezie sulle cose straniere, come gli stranieri, e le facezie sul formaggio andato a male. Il signor Max Beerbohm credeva di comprendere le prime due forme; ma non sono sicuro che le comprendesse. Per capire l’umorismo volgare non basta essere spiritosi. Bisogna anche essere volgari, come lo sono io. E nel primo caso è senz’altro evidente che non ridiamo (come confido facciamo) semplicemente per il fatto che qualcosa si fa male, quando un Primo Ministro si siede sul proprio cappello. Se fosse così dovremmo ridere ogni volta che vediamo un funerale. Non ridiamo del semplice fatto che qualcosa cade; non vi è nulla di comico nelle foglie che cadono o nel sole che tramonta. Quando la nostra casa crolla non ridiamo. Tutti gli uccelli del cielo potrebbero piovere intorno a noi in un acquazzone perpetuo come una grandinata senza destare un sorriso. Se davvero vi chiedete perché ridiamo di un uomo che si siede all’improvviso in mezzo alla strada, scoprirete che la ragione non è soltanto recondita, ma in ultima analisi religiosa. Tutte le facezie sugli uomini che si siedono sul proprio cappello sono in verità facezie teologiche; riguardano la duplice natura dell’uomo. Si riferiscono a quel paradosso primario per cui l’uomo è superiore a tutte le cose che lo circondano e tuttavia è alla loro mercé.
Del tutto egualmente sottile e spirituale è l’idea che sta dietro al ridere degli stranieri. Riguarda l’ilarità quasi tormentosa di una cosa che è simile a se stessi e tuttavia dissimile da se stessi. Nessuno ride di ciò che è interamente straniero; nessuno ride di una palma. Ma è buffo vedere la familiare immagine di Dio travestita dietro la barba nera di un francese o il volto nero di un negro. Non c’è nulla di comico nei suoni che sono del tutto disumani, l’ululato delle bestie feroci o del vento. Ma se un uomo comincia a parlare come noi, e però tutte le sillabe gli escono diverse, allora, se si è uomini, si sente l’inclinazione a ridere, sebbene, se si è gentiluomini, si resista all’inclinazione.
Il signor Max Beerbohm, lo ricordo, dichiarava di comprendere le prime due forme dello spirito popolare, ma diceva che la terza lo lasciava del tutto perplesso. Non riusciva a capire perché ci dovesse essere alcunché di buffo nel formaggio andato a male. Posso spiegarglielo all’istante. Gli è sfuggita l’idea perché essa è sottile e filosofica, mentre egli cercava qualcosa d’ignorante e sciocco. Il formaggio andato a male è buffo perché è (come lo straniero o l’uomo caduto sul selciato) il tipo del passaggio o della trasgressione attraverso un grande confine mistico. Il formaggio andato a male simboleggia il mutamento dall’inorganico all’organico. Il formaggio andato a male simboleggia lo strabiliante prodigio della materia che assume vitalità. Simboleggia l’origine stessa della vita. Ed è soltanto su faccende solenni come l’origine della vita che la democrazia si degna di scherzare. Così, per esempio, la democrazia scherza sul matrimonio, perché il matrimonio è una parte del genere umano. Ma la democrazia non si degnerebbe mai di scherzare sul Libero Amore, perché il Libero Amore è un pezzo di saccenteria.
In effetti, si troverà generalmente che la barzelletta popolare non è vera alla lettera, ma è vera nello spirito. La barzelletta volgare è di solito, nel modo più strano, la verità e tuttavia non il fatto. Per esempio, non è affatto vero che le suocere siano come categoria oppressive e intollerabili; la maggior parte di esse sono al tempo stesso devote e utili. Tutte le suocere che io abbia mai avuto erano ammirevoli. Eppure la leggenda dei giornali umoristici è profondamente vera. Richiama l’attenzione sul fatto che è assai più difficile essere una buona suocera che essere buoni in qualsiasi altra concepibile relazione della vita. Le caricature hanno rappresentato la peggiore suocera come un mostro, per esprimere il fatto che la migliore suocera è un problema. Lo stesso vale per le perpetue facezie dei giornali umoristici sulle mogli bisbetiche e sui mariti succubi. È tutta una frenetica esagerazione, ma è l’esagerazione di una verità; mentre tutte le moderne tirate sulle donne oppresse sono le esagerazioni di una menzogna. Se leggete anche i migliori intellettuali di oggi li troverete affermare che nella massa della democrazia la donna è la proprietà del suo signore, come la sua vasca o il suo letto. Ma se leggete la letteratura umoristica della democrazia troverete che è il signore a nascondersi sotto il letto per sfuggire all’ira della sua proprietà. Questo non è il fatto, ma è molto più vicino alla verità. Ogni uomo sposato sa bene non solo che non considera la propria moglie una proprietà, ma che nessun uomo può concepibilmente averlo mai fatto. La barzelletta sta per una verità ultima, e questa è una verità sottile. Non è affatto facile enunciarla correttamente. La si può forse enunciare nel modo più corretto dicendo che, anche se l’uomo è il capo della casa, egli sa di esserne la polena.
But the vulgar comic papers are so subtle and true that they are even prophetic. If you really want to know what is going to happen to the future of our democracy, do not read the modern sociological prophecies, do not read even Mr. Wells’s Utopias for this purpose, though you should certainly read them if you are fond of good honesty and good English. If you want to know what will happen, study the pages of Snaps or Patchy Bits as if they were the dark tablets graven with the oracles of the gods. For, mean and gross as they are, in all seriousness, they contain what is entirely absent from all Utopias and all the sociological conjectures of our time: they contain some hint of the actual habits and manifest desires of the English people. If we are really to find out what the democracy will ultimately do with itself, we shall surely find it, not in the literature which studies the people, but in the literature which the people studies.
I can give two chance cases in which the common or Cockney joke was a much better prophecy than the careful observations of the most cultured observer. When England was agitated, previous to the last General Election, about the existence of Chinese labour, there was a distinct difference between the tone of the politicians and the tone of the populace. The politicians who disapproved of Chinese labour were most careful to explain that they did not in any sense disapprove of Chinese. According to them, it was a pure question of legal propriety, of whether certain clauses in the contract of indenture were not inconsistent with our constitutional traditions: according to them, the case would have been the same if the people had been Kaffirs or Englishmen. It all sounded wonderfully enlightened and lucid; and in comparison the popular joke looked, of course, very poor. For the popular joke against the Chinese labourers was simply that they were Chinese; it was an objection to an alien type; the popular papers were full of gibes about pigtails and yellow faces. It seemed that the Liberal politicians were raising an intellectual objection to a doubtful document of State; while it seemed that the Radical populace were merely roaring with idiotic laughter at the sight of a Chinaman’s clothes. But the popular instinct was justified, for the vices revealed were Chinese vices.
But there is another case more pleasant and more up to date. The popular papers always persisted in representing the New Woman or the Suffragette as an ugly woman, fat, in spectacles, with bulging clothes, and generally falling off a bicycle. As a matter of plain external fact, there was not a word of truth in this. The leaders of the movement of female emancipation are not at all ugly; most of them are extraordinarily good looking. Nor are they indifferent to art or decorative costume; many of them are alarmingly attached to these things. Yet the popular instinct was right. For the popular instinct was that in this movement, rightly or wrongly, there was an element of indifference to female dignity, of a quite new willingness of women to be grotesque. These women did truly despise the pontifical quality of woman. And in our streets and around our Parliament we have seen the stately woman of art and culture turn into the comic woman of Comic Bits. And whether we think the exhibition justifiable or not, the prophecy of the comic papers is justified; the healthy and vulgar masses were conscious of a hidden enemy to their traditions who has now come out into the daylight, that the scriptures might be fulfilled. For the two things that a healthy person hates most between heaven and hell are a woman who is not dignified and a man who is.
Part of an etext in progress by Rob Szarka.
Ma i volgari giornali umoristici sono tanto sottili e veri da essere perfino profetici. Se davvero volete sapere che cosa sta per accadere al futuro della nostra democrazia, non leggete le moderne profezie sociologiche, non leggete nemmeno le Utopie del signor Wells a questo scopo, per quanto dobbiate certamente leggerle se avete a cuore l’onestà schietta e il buon inglese. Se volete sapere che cosa accadrà, studiate le pagine di Snaps o di Patchy Bits come se fossero le oscure tavole incise con gli oracoli degli dèi. Perché, per meschini e grossolani che siano, in tutta serietà, essi contengono ciò che è del tutto assente da ogni Utopia e da ogni congettura sociologica del nostro tempo: contengono qualche indizio delle abitudini reali e dei desideri manifesti del popolo inglese. Se davvero vogliamo scoprire che cosa la democrazia finirà per fare di sé stessa, lo troveremo di sicuro non nella letteratura che studia il popolo, ma nella letteratura che il popolo studia.
Posso addurre due casi fortuiti in cui la battuta comune o cockney fu una profezia assai migliore delle attente osservazioni dell’osservatore più colto. Quando l’Inghilterra si agitava, prima delle ultime elezioni generali, sull’esistenza del lavoro cinese, vi era una netta differenza tra il tono dei politici e il tono del popolo. I politici che disapprovavano il lavoro cinese si affannavano a spiegare che non disapprovavano in alcun senso i Cinesi. Secondo loro, era una pura questione di correttezza giuridica, se certe clausole nel contratto di ingaggio non fossero incompatibili con le nostre tradizioni costituzionali: secondo loro, il caso sarebbe stato identico se quella gente fosse stata di Cafri o di Inglesi. Tutto suonava mirabilmente illuminato e lucido; e al confronto la battuta popolare appariva, naturalmente, assai povera. Perché la battuta popolare contro i lavoratori cinesi era semplicemente che erano Cinesi; era un’obiezione contro un tipo alieno; i giornali popolari erano pieni di frizzi su codini e facce gialle. Sembrava che i politici liberali sollevassero un’obiezione intellettuale a un dubbio documento di Stato; mentre sembrava che la plebe radicale non facesse che sghignazzare idiotamente alla vista degli abiti di un cinese. Ma l’istinto popolare aveva ragione, poiché i vizi rivelati erano vizi cinesi.
Ma c’è un altro caso più piacevole e più attuale. I giornali popolari si ostinarono sempre a raffigurare la Donna Nuova o la Suffragetta come una donna brutta, grassa, con gli occhiali, con abiti sformati, e in genere mentre cade da una bicicletta. Come nudo fatto esteriore, non v’era una parola di verità in tutto ciò. Le capofila del movimento di emancipazione femminile non sono affatto brutte; la maggior parte sono straordinariamente belle. Né sono indifferenti all’arte o al costume decorativo; molte di esse sono spaventosamente attaccate a queste cose. Eppure l’istinto popolare aveva ragione. Perché l’istinto popolare era che in questo movimento, a torto o a ragione, vi era un elemento di indifferenza alla dignità femminile, una disponibilità del tutto nuova delle donne a farsi grottesche. Queste donne davvero disprezzavano la qualità pontificale della donna. E nelle nostre strade e intorno al nostro Parlamento abbiamo visto la maestosa donna dell’arte e della cultura mutarsi nella donna comica di Comic Bits. E che si giudichi giustificabile l’esibizione o no, la profezia dei giornali comici è giustificata; le masse sane e volgari erano consapevoli di un nemico nascosto delle loro tradizioni, che ora è venuto alla luce del giorno, affinché le scritture si adempissero. Perché le due cose che una persona sana odia di più tra il cielo e l’inferno sono una donna che non è dignitosa e un uomo che lo è.
Part of an etext in progress by Rob Szarka.