Freud - Complete Works (289 page)
Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious
1648
Another example: ‘Iron
front - iron cash-box - Iron Crown’. What an extraordinary
saving compared with an expression of the same thought in which
‘iron’ finds no place: ‘With the help of the
necessary boldness and lack of conscience it is not difficult to
amass a large fortune, and for such services a title will of course
be a suitable reward.’
Condensation, and therefore
economy, is indeed quite unmistakably present in these examples.
But it should be present in
every
example. Where is the
economy hidden in such jokes as ‘Rousseau -
roux et
sot
’ or ‘Antigone -
antik? oh nee
’, in
which we first noticed the absence of condensation and which were
our principal motive for putting forward the technique of the
repeated use of the same material? It is true that here we should
not find that condensation would meet the case; but if instead of
it we take the more inclusive concept of economy, we can manage
without difficulty. It is easy to point out what we save in the
case of Rousseau, Antigone, etc. We save having to express a
criticism or give shape to a judgement; both are already there in
the name itself. In the example of ‘
Leidenschaft -
Eifersucht
[passion-jealousy]’ we save ourselves the
trouble of laboriously constructing a definition:
‘
Eifersucht, Leidenschaft
- ‘
Eifer sucht
[‘eagerness seeks’], ‘
Leidenschafft
’
[‘causes pain’]. We have only to add the linking words
and there we have our definition ready made. The case is similar in
all the other examples that have so far been analysed. Where there
is least saving, as in Saphir’s play upon words ‘
Sie
kommen um Ihre 100 Dukaten
’, there is at any rate a
saving of the necessity for framing a new wording for the reply;
the wording of the question is sufficient for the answer. The
saving is not much, but in it the joke lies. The multiple use of
the same words for question and answer is certainly an
‘economy’. Like Hamlet’s view of the rapid
sequence of his father’s death and his mother’s
marriage:
The funeral baked-meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious
1649
But before we accept the
‘tendency to economy’ as the most general
characteristic of the technique of jokes and ask such questions as
where it comes from, what it signifies and how the joke’s
yield of pleasure arises from it, we must find space for a doubt
which has a right to be heard. It may be that every joke technique
shows the tendency to save something in expression: but the
relation is not reversible. Not every economy of expression, not
every abbreviation, is on that account a joke as well. We reached
this point once before, when we were still hoping to find the
process of condensation in every joke, and raised the justifiable
objection that a laconic remark is not enough to constitute a joke.
There must therefore be some peculiar kind of abbreviation and
economy on which the characteristic of being a joke depends; and
until we know the nature of that peculiarity our discovery of the
common element in the techniques of jokes brings us no nearer to a
solution of our problem. And let us, further, have the courage to
admit that the economies made by the joke-technique do not greatly
impress us. They may remind us, perhaps, of the way in which some
housewives economize when they spend time and money on a journey to
a distant market because vegetables are to be had there a few
farthings cheaper. What does a joke save by its technique? The
putting together of a few new words, which would mostly have
emerged without any trouble. Instead of that, it has to take the
trouble to search out the one word which covers the two thoughts.
Indeed, it must often first transform one of the thoughts into an
unusual form which will provide a basis for its combination with
the second thought. Would it not have been simpler, easier, and, in
fact, more economical to have expressed the two thoughts as they
happened to come, even if this involved no common form of
expression? Is not the economy in words uttered more than
balanced by the expenditure on intellectual effort? And who saves
by that? Who gains by it?
We can evade these doubts
provisionally if we transpose them to another place. Have we really
already discovered all the kinds of joke-technique? It will
certainly be more prudent to collect fresh examples and subject
them to analysis.
Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious
1650
We have in fact not yet
considered a large - perhaps the most numerous - group of jokes,
influenced, perhaps, by the contempt with which they are regarded.
They are the kind which are generally known as
‘
Kalauer
’ (‘
calembourgs
’)
[‘puns’] and which pass as the lowest form of verbal
joke, probably because they are the ‘cheapest’ - can be
made with the least trouble. And they do in fact make the least
demand on the technique of expression, just as the play upon words
proper makes the highest. While in the latter the two meanings
should find their expression in identically the same word, which on
that account is usually said only once, it is enough for a pun if
the two words expressing the two meanings recall each other by some
vague similarity, whether they have a general similarity of
structure or a rhyming assonance, or whether they share the same
first few letters, and so on. A quantity of examples like this of
what are not very appropriately described as
‘
Klangwitze
[sound-jokes]’ occur in the Capuchin
monk’s sermon in
Wallensteins Lager
:
Kümmert sich mehr um den
Krug
als den
Krieg
,
Wetzt lieber den
Schnabel
als den
Sabel
. . . . . . . .
Frisst den
Ochsen
lieber als den
Oxenstirn
’,
. . . . . . . .
Der
Rheinstrom
ist worden zu einem
Peinstrom
,
Die
Klöster
sind ausgenommene
Nester
,
Die
Bistümer
sind verwandelt in
Wüsttümer
.
. . . . . . . .
Und alle die gesegneten deutschen
Länder
Sind verkehrt worden in
Elender
.
¹
¹
[Literally:-
He cares more for the
bottle
than the
battle
,
Would rather whet his
nose
than his
sword
. . . . . . . .
Would rather eat
oxen
than
Oxenstirn
’,
. . . . . . . .
The
Rhine stream
has become a
pain stream
,
The
monastries
are robbed
bird’s
nests
,
The
bishoprics
are transformed into
desertrics
.
. . . . . . . .
And all the blessed German
lands
Have been turned into
wretched places
.]
Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious
1651
Jokes are particularly apt to
change one of the vowels in a word. Thus Hevesi (1888, 87) writes
of an anti-Imperial Italian poet who was nevertheless obliged later
to eulogize a German emperor in hexameters: ‘Since he could
not exterminate the
Cäsaren
[Caesars], he at least
eliminated the
Cäsuren
[caesuras].
Out of the profusion of puns at
our disposal, it will perhaps be of special interest to bring up a
really bad example, of which Heine is guilty. Having for a long
time represented himself to his lady as an ‘Indian
prince’, he throws off the mask and confesses: ‘Madame,
I have deceived you . . . I have no more ever been in
Kalkutta
[Calcutta] than the
Kalkuttenbraten
[roast
Calcutta fowl] that I ate for luncheon yesterday.’ The
mistake in this joke clearly lies in the fact that the two similar
words in it are not merely similar but actually identical. The bird
which he had eaten roast is so called, because it comes, or is
supposed to come, from the same Calcutta.
Fischer (1889, 78) has devoted
much attention to these forms of joke, and tries to distinguish
them sharply from ‘play upon words’. ‘A pun is a
bad play upon words, since it plays upon the word not as a word but
as a sound.’ The play upon words, however, ‘passes from
the sound of the word to the word ‘itself.’ On the
other hand, he classes such jokes as
famillionär
,
Antigone (
antik? oh nee
), etc. among the ‘sound
jokes’. I see no necessity for following him in this. In a
play upon words, in our view, the word is also only a sound-image,
to which one meaning or another is attached. But here, too,
linguistic usage makes no sharp distinctions; and if it treats
‘puns’ with contempt and ‘play upon words’
with a certain respect, these judgements of value seem to be
determined by considerations other than technical ones. It is worth
while paying attention to the kind of jokes that are told one as
‘puns’. There are some people who, when they are in
high spirits, can for considerable periods of time, answer every
remark addressed to them with a pun. One of my friends, who is a
model of discretion where his serious achievements in science are
concerned, is apt to boast of this ability. When on one occasion he
was holding the company breathless in this way and admiration was
expressed for his staying power: ‘Yes’, he said
‘I am lying here
auf der Ka-Lauer
.’² And
when he was finally begged to stop, he agreed to on condition that
he was appointed ‘
Poeta Ka-laureatus
’. Both of
these, however, are excellent jokes of condensation with formation
of composite words. (‘I am lying here
auf der Lauer
for making
Kalauer
[puns].’)
In any case we can already gather
from the disputes about the delimitation of puns and play upon
words that the former will not be able to help us to discover a
completely new joke technique. If, in the case of puns, we give up
the claim for the use of the
same
material in more than one
sense, nevertheless the accent falls on rediscovering what is
familiar, on the correspondence between the two words that make up
the pun; and consequently puns merely form a sub-species of the
group which reaches its peak in the play upon words proper.
¹
‘Ideen’, Chapter V.
²
[‘
Kalauer
’ =
‘pun’. ‘
Auf der Lauer
’ = ‘on
the look-out’.]
Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious
1652
But there really are jokes whose
technique resists almost any attempt to connect it with the groups
that have so far been considered.
‘The story is told of Heine
that he was in a Paris
salon
one evening conversing with the
dramatist Soulié, when there came into the room one of those
financial kings of Paris whom people compare with Midas - and not
merely on account of their wealth. He was soon surrounded by a
crowd who treated him with the greatest deference. "Look
there!" Soulié remarked to Heine, "Look at the way
the nineteenth century is worshipping the Golden Calf!" With a
glance at the object of so much admiration, Heine replied, as
though by way of correction: "Oh, he must be older than that
by now!"' (Fischer, 1889, 82-3.)
Where shall we look for the
technique of this excellent joke? In a play upon words, thinks
Fischer: ‘Thus, for instance, the words "Golden
Calf" can mean both Mammon and idolatry. In the one case the
gold is the main thing and in the other the statue of the animal;
it may also serve to characterize, in not precisely flattering
terms, someone who has a great deal of money and very little
sense.’ (Loc. cit.) If we make the experiment of removing the
expression ‘Golden Calf’, we certainly get rid of the
joke at the same time. We make Soulié say: ‘Look
there! Look at the way the people are crowding round the stupid
fellow simply because he’s rich!’ This is no longer a
joke and Heine’s reply is also made impossible.