Freud - Complete Works (285 page)

  
¹
[The German for
‘fool’.]

  
²
[‘
Scheusal
’ means
‘monstrous creature’.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1627

   I have been told the following
condensation joke. A young man who had hitherto led a gay life
abroad paid a call, after a considerable absence, on a friend
living here. The latter was surprised to see an
Ehering
[wedding-ring] on his visitor’s hand, ‘What?’ he
exclaimed, ‘are you married?’ ‘Yes’, was
the reply, ‘
Trauring
but true.’¹ The joke
is an excellent one. The word ‘
Trauring
’
combines both components: ‘
Ehering
’ changed into
‘
Trauring
’ and the sentence ‘
traurig,
aber wahr
[sad but true]’. The effect of the joke is not
interfered with by the fact that here the composite word is not,
like ‘
famillionär
’, an unintelligible and
otherwise non-existent structure, but one which coincides entirely
with one of the two elements represented.

   In the course of conversation I
myself once unintentionally provided the material for a joke that
is once again quite analogous to
‘
famillionär
’. I was talking to a lady
about the great services that had been rendered by a man of science
who I considered had been unjustly neglected. ‘Why,’
she said, ‘the man deserves a monument.’ ‘Perhaps
he will get one some day,’ I replied, ‘but
momentan
he has very little success.’
‘
Monument
’ and ‘
momentan
’ are
opposites. The lady proceeded to unite them: ‘Well, let us
wish him a
monumentan²
success.’

  
¹
[‘
Traurig
’ would have
meant ‘sad’. ‘
Trauring
’ is a synonym
for ‘
Ehering
.’]

  
²
[A non-existing word.
‘
Monumental
’ (as in English) would have been
expected.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1628

   I owe a few examples in foreign
languages, which show the same mechanism of condensation as our
‘
famillionär
’, to an excellent discussion
of the same subject in English by A. A. Brill (1911).

   The English author De Quincey,
Brill tells us, somewhere remarked that old people are inclined to
fall into their ‘anecdotage’. This word is a fusion of
the partly overlapping words

                                   
ANECDOTE

and                              
         DOTAGE.

   In an anonymous short story Brill
once found the Christmas season described as ‘the
alcoholidays’ - a similar fusing of

                                   
ALCOHOL

and                              
         HOLIDAYS.

   After Flaubert had published his
celebrated novel
Salammbô
, the scene of which is laid
in ancient Carthage, Sainte-Beuve laughed at it, on account of its
elaboration of detail, as being ‘Carthaginoiserie’;

                                   
CARTHAGINOIS

                                               
CHINOISERIE.

   But the best example of a joke of
this group originated from one of the leading men in Austria, who,
after important scientific and public work, now fills one of the
highest offices in the State. I have ventured to make use of the
jokes which are ascribed to him, and all of which in fact bear the
same impress, as material for these researches,¹ above all
because it would have been hard to find any better.

   Herr N.’s attention was
drawn one day to the figure of a writer who had become well-known
from a series of undeniably boring essays which he had contributed
to a Vienna daily paper. All of these essays dealt with small
episodes in the relations of the first Napoleon with Austria. The
author had red hair. As soon as Herr N. heard his name mentioned he
asked: ‘Is not that the
roter Fadian
² that runs
through the story of the Napoleonids?’

  
¹
Have I the right to do so? At least I have
not obtained my knowledge of these jokes through an indiscretion.
They are generally known in this city (Vienna) and are to be found
in everyone’s mouth. A number of them have been given
publicity by Eduard Hanslick in the
Neue Freie Presse
and in
his autobiography. As regards the others, I must offer my apologies
for any possible distortions, which, in the case of oral tradition,
are scarcely to be avoided.

  
²
[‘
Roter
’ means
‘red’, ‘scarlet’.
‘
Fadian
’ means ‘dull fellow’. The
termination ‘-
ian
’ is occasionally added to an
adjective, giving the somewhat contemptuous sense of
‘fellow’. Thus ‘
grob
’ means
‘coarse’, ‘
Grobian
’ means
‘coarse fellow: ‘
dumm
’ means
‘stupid’, ‘
Dummian
’ means
‘stupid fellow’. The adjective
‘
fade
’ or ‘
fad
’ means (like
its French equivalent) ‘insipid’, ‘dull’.
Finally, ‘
Faden
’ means
‘thread’.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1629

   In order to discover the
technique of this joke, we must apply to it the process of
reduction which gets rid of the joke by changing the mode of
expression and instead introducing the original complete meaning,
which can be inferred with certainty from a good joke. Herr
N.’s joke about the ‘
roter Fadian
’
proceeds from two components - a depreciatory judgement upon the
writer and a recollection of the famous simile with which Goethe
introduces the extracts ‘From Ottilie’s Diary’ in
the
Wahlverwandtschaften
.¹ The ill-tempered criticism
may have run: ‘So this is the person who is for ever and ever
writing nothing but boring stories about Napoleon in
Austria!’ Now this remark is not in the least a joke. Nor is
Goethe’s pretty analogy a joke, and it is certainly not
calculated to make us laugh. It is only when the two are brought
into connection with each other and submitted to the peculiar
process of condensation and fusion that a joke emerges - and a joke
of the first order.²

  
¹
‘We hear of a peculiar practice in
the English Navy. Every rope in the king’s fleet, from the
strongest to the weakest, is woven in such a way that a
roter
Faden
[scarlet thread] runs through its whole length. It cannot
be extracted without undoing the whole rope, and it proves that
even the smallest piece is crown property. In just the same way a
thread of affection and dependence runs through Ottilie’s
diary, binding it all together and characterizing the whole of
it.’ Goethe, Sophienausgabe, 20, 212.)

  
²
I need hardly point out how little this
observation, which can invariably be made, fits in with the
assertion that a joke is a playful judgement.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1630

   The linking of the disparaging
judgement upon the boring historian with the pretty analogy in the
Wahlverwandtschaften
must have taken place (for reasons
which I cannot yet make intelligible) in a less simple manner than
in many similar cases. I shall try to represent what was probably
the actual course of events by the following construction. First,
the element of the constant recurrence of the same theme in the
stories may have awoken a faint recollection in Herr N. of the
familiar passage in the
Wahlverwandtschaften
, which is as a
rule wrongly quoted: ‘it runs like a
roter Faden
[scarlet thread].’ The ‘
roter Faden
’ of
the analogy now exercised a modifying influence of the expression
of the first sentence, as a result of the chance circumstance that
the person insulted was also
rot
[red] - that is to say had
red hair. It may then have run: ‘So it is that red person who
writes the boring stories about Napoleon!’ And now the
process began which brought about the condensation of the two
pieces. Under its pressure, which had found its first fulcrum in
the sameness of the element ‘
rot
’, the
‘boring’ was assimilated to the ‘
Faden
[thread]’ and was changed into ‘
fad
[dull]’; after this the two components were able to fuse
together into the actual text of the joke, in which, in this case,
the quotation has an almost greater share than the derogatory
judgement, which was undoubtedly present alone to begin with.

‘So it is that
red
person who
writes this
fade
stuff about N[apoleon].

 The            
red                                  Faden
that runs through everything.’

—————————————————————————————————-

‘Is not that the
red Fadian
that
runs through the story of the N[apoleonids]?’

   In a later chapter I shall add a
justification, but also a correction, to this account, when I come
to analyse this joke from points of view other than purely formal
ones. But whatever else about it may be in doubt, there can be no
question that a condensation has taken place. The result of the
condensation is, on the one hand, once again a considerable
abbreviation; but on the other hand, instead of the formation of a
striking composite word, there is an interpenetration of the
constituents of the two components. It is true that ‘
roter
Faden
’ would be capable of existing as a mere term of
abuse; but in our instance it is certainly a product of
condensation.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1631

   If at this point a reader should
become indignant at a method of approach which threatens to ruin
his enjoyment of jokes without being able to throw any light on the
source of that enjoyment, I would beg him to be patient for the
moment. At present we are only dealing with the technique of jokes;
and the investigation even of this promises results, if we pursue
it sufficiently far.

   The analysis of the last example
has prepared us to find that, if we meet with the process of
condensation in still other examples, the substitute for what is
suppressed may be not a composite structure, but some other
alteration of the form of expression. We can learn what this other
form of substitute may be from another of Herr N.’s
jokes.

   ‘I drove with him
tête-à-bête
.’ Nothing can be easier
than the reduction of this joke. Clearly it can only mean: ‘I
drove with X
tête-à-tête
, and X is a
stupid ass.’

   Neither of these sentences is a
joke. They could be put together: ‘I drove with that stupid
ass X
tête-à-tête
’, and that is not
a joke either. The joke only arises if the ‘stupid ass’
is left out, and, as a substitute for it, the ‘t’ in
one ‘
tête
’ is turned into a
‘b’. With this slight modification the suppressed
‘ass’ has nevertheless once more found expression. The
technique of this group of jokes can be described as
‘condensation accompanied by slight modification’, and
it may be suspected that the slighter the modification the better
will be the joke.

   The technique of another joke is
similar, though not without its complication. In the course of a
conversation about someone in whom there was much to praise, but
much to find fault with, Herr N. remarked: ‘Yes, vanity is
one of his four Achilles heels.’¹ In this case the
slight modification consists in the fact that, instead of the
one
Achilles heel which the hero himself must have
possessed,
four
are here in question. Four heels - but only
an ass has four heels. Thus the two thoughts that are condensed in
the joke ran: ‘Apart from his vanity, Y is an eminent man;
all the same I don’t like him - he’s an ass rather than
a man.’²

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1912:] It seems that
this joke was applied earlier by Heine to Alfred de
Musset.

  
²
One of the complications in the technique
of this example lies in the fact that the modification by which the
omitted insult is replaced must be described as an
allusion
to the latter, since it only leads to it by a process of inference.
For another factor that complicates the technique here, see
below.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1632

   I happened to hear another
similar, but much simpler, joke
in statu nascendi
in a
family circle. Of two brothers at school, one was an excellent and
the other a most indifferent scholar. Now it happened once that the
exemplary boy too came to grief at school; and their mother
referred to this while expressing her concern that it might mean
the beginning of a lasting deterioration. The boy who had hitherto
been overshadowed by his brother readily grasped the opportunity.
‘Yes’, he said, ‘Karl’s going backwards on
all fours.’

   The modification here consists in
a short addition to the assurance that he too was of the opinion
that the other boy was going backwards. But this modification
represented and replaced a passionate plea on his own behalf:
‘You mustn’t think he’s so much cleverer than I
am simply because he’s more successful at school. After all
he’s only a stupid ass - that’s to say, much stupider
than I am.’