The Act of Creation Read Free Page A

this game is to show that
regardless of what scale of values you choose to apply, you will move
across a continuum without sharp breaks; there are no frontiers where the
realm of science ends and that of art begins, and the uomo
universale of the Renaissance was a citizen of both.

On the other side of the triptych the boundaries between discovery and
comic invention are equally fluid -- as the present chapter will show
-- although at first sight this is less obvious to see. That the Jester
should be brother to the Sage may sound like blasphemy, yet our language
reflects the close relationship: the word 'witticism' is derived from
'wit' in its original sense of ingenuity, inventiveness.* Jester and
savant must both 'live on their wits'; and we shall see that the Jester's
riddles provide a useful back-door entry, as it were, into the inner
workshop of creative originality.

The Laughter Reflex

Laughter is a reflex. The word reflex, as Sir Charles Sherrington said,
is a useful fiction. However much its definitions and connotations
differ according to various schools -- it has in fact been the central
battleground of psychology for the last fifty years -- no one is likely
to quarrel with the statement that we are the more justified to call
an organism's behaviour 'reflex' the more it resembles the action of
a mechanical slot-machine; that is to say, the more instantaneous,
predictable, and stereotyped it is. We may also use the synonyms
'automatic', 'involuntary', etc., which some psychologists dislike;
they are in fact implied in the previous sentence.

Spontaneous laughter is produced by the coordinated contraction of fifteen
facial muscles in a stereotyped pattern and accompanied by altered
breathing. The following is a description abridged from Sully's classic
essay on the subject.

Smiling involves a complex group of facial movements. It may suffice
to remind the reader of such characteristic changes as the drawing
back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, the raising of
the upper lip, which partially uncovers the teeth, and the curving
of the furrows betwixt the corners of the mouth and the nostrils
(the naso-labial furrows). To these must be added the formation
of wrinkles under the eye, which is a further result of the first
movement . . . and the increased brightness of the eyes.

These facial changes are common to the smile and the laugh, though
in the more violent forms of laughter the eyes are apt to lose under
their lachrymal suffusion the sparkle which the smile brings.

We may now pass to the larger experience of the audible laugh. That
this action is physiologically continuous with the smile has already
been suggested. . . . How closely connected are smiling and moderate
laughing may be seen by the tendency we experience when we reach
the broad smile and the fully open mouth to start the respiratory
movements of laughter. As Darwin and others have pointed out, there
is a series of gradations from the faintest and most decorous smile
up to the full explosion of the laugh.

. . . The series of gradations here indicated is gone through, more
or less rapidly, in an ordinary laugh. . . . The recognition of this
identity of the two actions is evidenced by the usages of speech. We
see in the classical languages a tendency to employ the same word for
the two. . . . This is particularly clear in the case of the Latin ridere , which means to smile as well as to laugh, the form subridere being rare (Italian, ridere and sorridere ;
French rire and sourire ; German lachen and lächeln ).

We may now turn to the distinguishing characteristics of laughing;
that is, the production of the familiar series of sounds. . . . [1]

But these do not concern us yet. The point to retain is the continuity
of the scale leading from the faint smile to Homeric laughter,
confirmed by laboratory experiments. Electrical stimulation of the
'zygomatic major,' the main lifting muscle of the upper lip, with
currents of varying intensity,