Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/26

10 witticism appears in the first place simply as a faulty word-formation, as something incomprehensible, inconceivable, and enigmatic. It is for these reasons that it is confusing. The comic element results from the solution of the enigma and from the understanding of the word. Lipps adds that the first stage of enlightenment, showing that the confusing word means this or that, is followed by a second stage in which one perceives that this nonsensical word has first deluded us and then given us the true meaning. Only this second enlightenment, the realization that it is all due to a word that is meaningless in ordinary usage—this reduction to nothingness produces the comic effect (p. 95). Whether or not either the one or the other of these two conceptions may seem more clear we are brought nearer to a definite insight through the discussion of the processes of confusion and enlightenment. If the comic effect of Heine’s famillionaire depends upon the solution of the seemingly senseless word, then the wit would have to be attributed to the formation of this word and to the character of the word so formed. In addition to the associations of the viewpoints just discussed there is another characteristic of wit which is recognized as peculiar to it by all authors. “Brevity alone is the body and