バートランド・ラッセル「ユーモアのセンス」(1932.12.7)(松下彰良 訳)* 原著：A sense of humour, by Bertrand Russell* Mortals and Others, v.1, 1975. |
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* 改訳及びHTML修正をしました。(2011.3.26)
19世紀初頭、鉄道が駅馬車にとって代わり、工場の煙突が水車にとって代わり、田舎（田園）の美観が損なわれ、功利主義が世間を支配した時、人々は自らの繊細な感性（感受性）に誇りを抱いた。当時紳士として不可欠な資質は、バイロン風の絶望、苦悩する心？、岩だらけの人里離れた場所（rocky solitude）や廃墟と化した寺院への愛（情）であった。紳士たる者は、絶望の苦悩から絞り出された空しい笑い以外、笑うことは期待されなかった（望まれなかった）。しかし次第にこういった極端な感情は疲れるものであることがわかり、現代のユーモア崇拝がそれにとって代わった。この変化で世界がより愉快なものになったかどうか、私には確信がもてない。以前は淑女がハープの演奏を習ったように、今日彼女たちは、あらゆることについて、陽気かつウィット（機知）のある話し方（話術）を習う。もし誰かが私に、「私は、夏よりも秋の方がずっと涼しいといつも思っています、はっ、はっ、はっ！」と語って、あたかもそれはタレーランの警句に匹敵するものであるかのように、私の反応を期待するならば、私は適切な反応をとることがいくらか困難であることを知る。もう少し高いレベルの話題であっても、過度のユーモアは非常に退屈なものである。私はかつて、大学経営（university politics）を話題にし、多様な人々をそれぞれ経済問題における自由派と保守派にわけて説明する、多数の教授陣の集まりに出席したことがある。私は知識を求めたいという心からの欲求から、この２つの党派の違いはどこにあるかと彼らに質問した。教授たちは次々とウィットに富んだユーモアを連発したが、誰からも、いかなる（実質的な）知識も得ることができなかった。私に十分なユーモアのセンスがあったならば、私はこのようなことにこだわらなかっただろうが、不幸にして私はユーモアを解せない、極端に希少な存在である。私が自分のこの痛ましい事実にはじめて気がついたのは、第一次世界大戦の最中に英国陸軍省に呼び出され、私にはユーモアのセンスがないと公式に告げられた時であった。私が世間並みにユーモアのセンスをもっていたならば、私は毎日何千人という兵士が（爆弾で）粉々に吹き飛ばされている事実に高度のおかしさを感ずることもできただろうが、恥ずかしながら告白すると、私は微笑する気にさえなれなかった。（注：言うまでもなく皮肉） 昔シナ（古代中国）の皇帝は、池を造り、池を酒で満たし、農民をその中へ突き落し、彼らが酔って溺死する苦闘を妻に見せて喜ばせた、とのことである（松下注：いわゆる酒池肉林）。彼はユーモアの持主であった。 |
'Whatever may be said against me, no one can say that I haven't got a sense of humour.' This is a speech which one hears over and over again; indeed it might be made by almost any English-speaking person. You may question all sorts of things about a man without making him really angry. You may say that he is stupid, that he is ruthless, that he is not honest about money, that he allowed his aged mother to starve in a garret, and he will argue with you calmly and reasonably to prove that he is innocent of these various crimes. But if you say that he has no sense of humour you will invariably produce an explosion of fury. This is a peculiarity of our age. In the seventeenth century, men burned each other at the stake for minute points of theology and killed each other with rapiers to prove that they were men of honour. They prided themselves, not on humour but on common sense. Descartes, who lived in that age, remarks that no quality is so well distributed as common sense, for no man has so little but that he thinks he has enough. In our time one might say the same of the sense of humour. In the early days of the nineteenth century, when railways were being substituted for stage coaches and factory chimneys for water mills, when the beauty of the countryside was being defaced and utilitarianism ruled the world, men prided themselves upon their exquisite sensibility. In those days the necessary equipment of a gentleman was Byronic despair, a tortured heart, a love of rocky solitudes and ruined temples. He was not expected to laugh, unless it were a hollow laugh wrung from the anguish of despair. Gradually, however, these heights of sentiment were found fatiguing, and in their place came the modern cult of humour. I am not sure that the change has made the world more amusing. Where formerly ladies learnt to play the harp, they now learn to say everything with a sprightly air, and an appearance of wit. When people say to me: 'I always think the autumn is so much cooler than the summer. Ho! Ho! Ho!' and expect me to behave as though I had heard an epigram worthy of Talleyrand, I find the appropriate behaviour somewhat difficult. Even at a slightly higher level, too much humour may become very tiresome. I was once in the company of a number of professors who were talking university politic and describing various people as respectively liberals and conservatives in economic matters. I inquired, with a real desire for knowledge, what were the differences between the two university parties. The professors, each in turn, fired off a witty remark, but from none of them could I obtain any information. If I had been adequately endowed with a sense of humour, I should not have minded this, but, alas, I am that extremely rare being, a man without a sense of humour. I had not suspected this painful fact until the middle of the War, when the British War Office sent for me and officially informed me of it. I gathered that if I had had my proper share of a sense of the ludicrous, I should have been highly diverted at the thought of several thousand men a day being blown to bits, which, I confess to my shame, never caused me even to smile. There was once a Chinese emperor who constructed a lake full of wine and drove peasants into it to amuse his wife with the struggles of their drunken drownings. He had a sense of humour. |
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