Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/54

 N., but it differs from them in lacking the condensation. Everything that was to be said has been told in the joke. “I know that you yourself were formerly a Jew, therefore I am surprised that you should rail against the Jew.”

An excellent example of such wit modification is also the familiar exclamation: “Traduttore—Traditore.”

The similarity between the two words, almost approaching identity, results in a very impressive representation of the inevitability by which a translator becomes a transgressor—in the eyes of the author.

The manifoldness of slight modifications possible in these jokes is so great that none is quite similar to the other. Here is a joke which is supposed to have arisen at an examination for the degree of law. The candidate was translating a passage from the Corpus juris, “Labeo ait.” “‘I fall (fail),’ says he,” volunteered the candidate. “‘You fall (fail),’ says I,” replied the examiner and the examination ended. Whoever mistakes the name of the celebrated Jurist for a word to which he attaches a false meaning certainly deserves nothing better. But the technique of the witticism lies in the fact that