Authors: Arthur Koestler

The Act of Creation (11 page)

In cases like this the wording of the narrative (or the picture on
the canvas) can remain unaltered, and its transformation from a comic
into a poetic or intellectually enlightening message depends entirely
on the subjective attitude of the percipient.* However, the lines of
correspondence across the panels are meant to indicate more general
patterns
of creative activity. Thus, as we move from coarse
humour towards the neutral zone, we find the bisociation of
sound and
meaning
first exemplified in the pun, then in word games (ranging from
the crossword puzzle to the decyphering of the Rosetta stone); lastly in
alliteration, asonance, and rhyme. The
mind-matter
theme we found
expressed in countless variations on all three panels; and each variation
of it -- the puppet on strings or Jack-in-the-Box -- was again seen as
tri-valent.
Impersonation
is used both in comedy and tragedy;
but in between them the medicine man in his mask, the cassocked priest
in the confessional, the psychiatrist in the role of the father, each
impersonate a person or power other than himself. The distorting mirror,
with its emphasis on one significant aspect to the exclusion of others,
is used alike in the
caricature
and in the scientist's diagrams
and schemata; when Clavdia in the
Magic Mountain
offers her lover
an X-ray portrait of her chest as a souvenir we hardly know on which of
the three panels we are. Nor can we draw a sharp line between social
satire and sociological discovery:
Animal Farm
and
1984
taught a whole generation more about the nature of totalitarianism than
academic science did. One last example:
In 1960 an anecdote in the form of an imaginary dialogue circulated
in the satellite countries of the East:

Tell me, Comrade, what is capitalism?
The exploitation of man by man.
And what is Communism?
The reverse.

The 'double entendre' on 'reverse' -- it
pretends
to be the
opposite, but it comes down to the same, only the exploiting is done by
a different gang --casts a new, sharp light on a hoary problem; it has
the same power of sudden illumination as an epigram by Voltaire.
Similar borderline cases are brain-twisters, logical paradoxes,
mathematical games. Even chess problems can be both 'witty' and 'funny'
if they contain some sudden reversal of logic, an ironical twist, or
an affront to chess common sense; the connoisseur will smile, or even
laugh, when he is shown the solution, and the tension suddenly snaps. His
laughter may signify 'how stupid of me not to have seen it' or 'not to
have seen it at once' or 'how clever of me', etc. To distinguish between
these cases would be splitting hairs, for the basic process is the same:
the tension has been dissociated from its original purpose and must find
some other outlet. When the string of the guitar snaps it gives out a
twang -- for precisely the same reason.
But this tension is no longer comparable to the emotions aroused in the
grosser types of humour. The intellectual challenge, which in the coarse
joke played such a subsidiary part, now dominates the picture; the A:
I ratio has been reversed. There may be vanity and competitiveness in
rising to the challenge; but they are sublimated and held in balance by
a self-forgetting absorption in the problem.
As we cross the fluid boundary leading into the central panel of the
triptych, the task of 'seeing the joke' becomes the task of 'solving
the problem'. And when we succeed we no longer roar with laughter as
at the clown's antics; laughter gradually shades into an amused, then
an admiring smile -- reflecting the harmonic balance of opposites,
the sudden glory and quiet glow of intellectual satisfaction.
The Creation of Humour
Up to now I have been discussing the effects of humour on the audience:
the reader, listener, spectator. Let me turn from the consumer's reactions
to the processes which go in on the mind of the producer -- the inventor
of the joke, the creator of humour.
Humour depends primarily on its surprise effect: the bisociative
shock. To cause surprise the humorist must have a modicum of
originality -- the ability to break away from the stereotyped routines
of thought. Caricaturist, satirist, the writer of nonsense-humour, and
even the expert tickler, each operates on more than one plane. Whether
his purpose is to convey a social message, or merely to entertain, he must
provide mental jolts, caused by the collision of incompatible matrices. To
any given situation or subject he must conjure up an appropriate --
or appropriately inappropriate -- intruder which will provide the jolt.

>> Stepping back out of situation, onto objective plane.

The first schoolboy to have the idea of sawing through the legs of the
master's chair must have been a genius (such practices were not uncommon
in my school-days in Hungary). His habitual outlets for aggression
being barred by the heavy penalties they would entail, he must have
been labouring under a creative stress which initiated his search for an
original solution of his problem. A chance observation -- like the fall
of Newton's apple -- may have provided the link to a different frame of
reference, where the object of his resentment was merely a mass subject
to the pull of gravity. Now all he had to do was to transfer the scene
of operations from the blocked matrix
M1
to this auxiliary matrix
M2
. If this sounds facetious let us remember that Bergson's theory
of humour is based on this single facet.
In all forms of malicious wit there is an aggressive tendency at work
which, for one reason or another, cannot be satisfied by the usual methods
of reasoned argument, physical violence, or straight invective. I shall
call a matrix 'blocked' when its 'rules of the game' prove inapplicable
to the existing situation or problem in hand; when none of the various
ways of exercising a skill, however plastic and adaptable that skill is,
leads to the desired goal. The young officer in the Viennese anecdote,
resenting the courtesan's pretentious reply, is in the same position as
the frustrated schoolboy: he cannot reply: 'Come off the high horse,
I know that cash is all that matters to you,' without incurring the
penalties of vulgarity. Chamfort's Marquis cannot kill the Bishop --
it would be an unpardonable lack of savoir-faire. Picasso cannot tell
the dealer that he is an insufferable bore who does not know a Kokoschka
from a Klee; that would be unkind.
But how do they discover the inspired reposte which saves the situation?
It sounds a simple question, but if psychology knew the answer to it
there would be no point in writing this book.
As a first step let us note a trivial fact: the officer's mental leap from
the metaphorical to the literal plane indicates a phenomenon already
discussed: the displacement of attention to a seemingly irrelevant
feature -- in this case from the poetic connotations of the lady's
heart to its concrete spatial location. (We remember that Wilde used
a similar displacement effect for a different purpose in 'How else
but through a broken heart . . .'). The Marquis achieves his aim --
to kill by ridicule -- by transferring his attention from the glaringly
obvious consideration that the Bishop is usurping his
privileges
,
to an irrelevant side-line -- that he is doing another man's
job
; as if the issue were a demarcation dispute between the Boilermakers'
and the Shipwrights' Unions on who should drill the holes.
Thus in some of the cases we have discussed, the solution is arrived at
by a kind of
thinking aside
, a shift of attention to some feature of
the situation, or an aspect of the problem, which was previously ignored,
or only present on the fringes of awareness. The humorist may stumble
on it by chance; or, more likely, guided by some intuition which he
is unable to define. This gives us a first intimation of unconscious
processes intervening in the creative act. The humorist's achievement,
represented on the neat diagrams in previous chapters, appears as an
exercise in pure intellecthal geometry: 'Construct two planes inclined
at a given angle and generate two curves which intersect in a given
point.' In actual fact, however, the bisociative act, in humour as in
other branches of creativity, depends in varying degrees on assistance
from fringe-conscious or unconscious processes. Picasso's illuminating
grunt was certainly inspired by a process of this kind. On the other hand,
the mediocre cartoonist and other professional craftsmen of the comic
operate mostly with the same familiar matrices, fixed at a given angle,
as it were, governed by familiar rules of the game; and their task is
reduced to devising new links -- puns, gags, pegs for parody. It is a
mechanized kind of bisociative technique, which also has its practitioners
in science and art.
Paradox and Synthesis
There is an obvious contrast between the emotive reactions of creator and
consumer: the person who invents the joke or comic idea seldom laughs in
the process. The creative stress under which he labours is not of the
same kind as the emotions aroused in the audience. He is engaged in an
intellectual exercise, a feat of mental acrobatics; even if motivated by
sheer venom it must be distilled and sublimated. Once he has hit on the
idea and worked out the logical structure, the basic pattern of the joke,
he uses his tricks of the trade -- suspense, emphasis, implication --
to work up the audience's emotions; and to make these explode in laughter
when he springs his surprise-effect on them.
Now the humorist may also experience surprise at the moment when the idea
hits him -- particularly if it was generated by the unconscious. But there
is a basic difference between a shock imposed from outside and a quasi
self-administered shock. The humorist has solved his problem by joining
two incompatible matrices together in a paradoxical synthesis. His
audience, on the other hand, has its expectations shattered and its
reason affronted by the impact of the second matrix on the first; instead
of fusion there is collision; and in the mental disarray which ensues,
emotion, deserted by reason, is flushed out in laughter.
In the humorist's mind no such divorce occurs; he has nothing to laugh
about. At most he may, at the moment of inspiration, hit his desk:
'I have got it.' But the creative stress which is relieved in such
minor gestures, symbolic of victory, of opposition vanquished, is of
a sublimated nature -- quite unlike the more primitive emotions puffed
away in the massive laughter of the audience. The contrast is further
illustrated in situations where a person fails to find the solution of
a brain-teaser -- and, on being told it, starts hitting, not the desk,
but his own benighted head. The redundant tension is worked off in a
symbolic gesture of self-punishment -- again a more specific outlet for
energies harnessed to intellectual tasks than the laughter-channels of
least resistance.
The less suggestive and the more implicit the joke, the more will the
consumer's reactions approximate the producer's -- whose mental effort
he is compelled to re-create. When the witticism is transformed into
epigram, and teasing into challenge, the overflow reflex for primitive
emotions is no longer needed, and de-tension assumes more individualized
and sophisticated forms; the roar of Homeric laughter is superseded by
Archimedes's piercing cry or Kepler's holy ravings.
The creative act of the humorist consisted in bringing about a momentary
fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices. Scientific discovery,
as we shall presently see, can be described in very similar terms -- as
the permanent fusion of matrices of thought previously believed to be
incompatible. Until the seventeenth century the Copernican hypothesis
of the earth's motion was considered as obviously incompatible with
commonsense experience; it was accordingly treated as a huge joke by the
majority of Galileo's contemporaries. One of them, a famous wit, wrote:
'The disputes of Signor Galileo have dissolved into alchemical smoke. So
here we are at last, safely back on a solid earth, and we do not have
to fly with it as so many ants crawling around a balloon.' [1]
The
history
of science abounds with examples of discoveries
greeted with howls of laughter because they seemed to be a marriage
of incompatibles -- until the marriage bore fruit and the alleged
incompatibility of the partners turned out to derive from prejudice. The
humorist, on the other hand, deliberately chooses discordant codes of
behaviour or universes of discourse to expose their hidden incongruities
in the resulting clash. Comic discovery is paradox stated -- scientific
discovery is paradox resolved.
But here again we find, instead of a clear dividing line, continuous
transitions. The paradoxes of Achilles and the Tortoise, or of the
Cretan Liar, have, during two millennia, tickled philosophers and teased
mathematicians into creative efforts; and Juvenal's
si Natura negat,
facit indignatio versum
remains as true as ever.
Summary
I have started this inquiry with an analysis of humour because it is the
only domain of creative activity where a complex pattern of intellectual
stimulation elicits a sharply defined response in the nature of a
physiological reflex.
The pattern underlying all varieties of humour is
bisociative
--
perceiving a situation or event in two habitually incompatible associative
contexts. This causes an abrupt transfer of the train of thought from one
matrix to another governed by a different logic or 'rule of the game'. But
certain emotions, owing to their greater inertia and persistence, cannot
follow such nimble jumps of thought; discarded by reason, they are worked
off along channels of least resistance in laughter.
The emotions in question are those of the self-assertive,
aggressive-defensive type, which are based on the sympathico-adrenal
system and tend to beget bodily activity. Their counter-parts are the
participatory or self-transcending emotions -- compassion, identification,
raptness -- which are mediated by physiological processes of a different
type, and tend to discharge not in laughter but in tears. As a rule
our emotions are a mixture of both; but even in the more subtle or
affectionate varieties of humour, an element of aggression -- a drop
of adrenalin -- must be present to trigger off the reaction. Laughter
is a luxury reflex which could arise only in a creature whose reason
has gained a degree of autonomy from the urges of emotion, and enables
him to perceive his own emotions as redundant -- to realize that he has
been fooled.
After applying the theory to various types of the comic, I discussed
the criteria of the humorist's technique:
originality
or
unexpectedness;
emphasis
through selection, exaggeration and
simplification; and economy or
implicitness
which calls for
extrapolation, interpolation and transposition.
The term 'matrix' was introduced to refer to any skill or ability, to any
pattern of activity governed by a set of rules -- its 'code'. All ordered
behaviour, from embryonic development to verbal thinking, is controlled by
'rules of the game', which lend it coherence and stability, but leave
it sufficient degrees of freedom for flexible strategies adapted to
environmental conditions. The ambiguity of the term 'code' ('code of
laws' -- 'coded message') is deliberate, and reflects a characteristic
property of the nervous system: to control all bodily activities by
means of coded signals.
The concept of matrices with fixed codes and adaptable strategies,
proposed as a unifying formula, appears to be equally applicable
to perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills and to the psychological
structures variously called 'frames of reference', 'associative contexts',
'universes of discourse', mental 'sets', or 'schemata', etc. The validity
of the formula will be tested in the chapters which follow, on various
levels from morphogenesis to symbolic thought.
Matrices vary from fully automatized skills to those with a high degree of
plasticity; but even the latter are controlled by rules of the game which
function below the level of awareness. These silent codes can be regarded
as condensations of learning into habit. Habits are the indispensable core
of stability and ordered behaviour; they also have a tendency to become
mechanized and to reduce man to the status of a conditioned automaton. The
creative act, by connecting previously unrelated dimensions of experience,
enables him to attain to a higher level of mental evolution. It is an
act of liberation -- the defeat of habit by originality.*

Other books

Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine (33 1/3) by Carr, Daphne

Bed and Breakfast [Bloodkin 1] (Siren Publishing Classic ManLove) by Scarlet Hyacinth

The World Duology (World Odyssey / Fiji: A Novel) by Lance Morcan, James Morcan

Zombie Mountain (Walking Plague Trilogy #3) by Rain, J.R., Basque, Elizabeth

Finding My Highlander by Aleigha Siron

Jack by China Miéville

Saven Disclosure (The Saven Series Book 2) by Siobhan Davis

An Accidental Gentleman by M.Q. Barber

Daisy Lane by Pamela Grandstaff

Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan