ANDREI SINIAVSKI
357
as if the joke wants to be forbidden on the spot, liquidated, and is be–
ing sustained by this expectation. Give it freedom, abolish the pro–
hibitions, and it will bite the dust!
The appearance of a whole series of jokes with the intention of
transcending the last barriers is not accidentaL I am talking about
jokes that test our resistance to squeamishness. Both the narrator
and listener (that also means you and me) must gather courage in
this instance and strain a little, holding back the lump of vomit in–
voluntarily coming up in the throat. That is, they must discard the
joke's literal meaning and go out into the fresh air, into the realm of
aesthetics and philology, and not interpret the joke's words and plot
literally or take them too close to heart. The effect of this series of
jokes, especially the artistic effect, depends on our ability to do so: it
is a test of our mett!t::. Let's see what we're capable of! The joke pro–
vides us with an endurance test, a trial of pure art, a provocation of
durability, of belonging to the genre.
The test is conducted in the following manner: two tubercular
patients (or syphilitics, for purposes of color and special titillation)
are spitting into a glass until it is full. Having made a wager, the
third participant in the meal undertakes to drink it all down in one
gulp. The test has begun, and we are the jury. He drinks calmly and
slowly, almost to the bottom. But at the end he can't seem to take it
for some reason and puts the glass down. "Feeling squeamish, huh?"
ask the other two maliciously. "Not at all," he answers crestfallen, "a
piece of snot got caught. I couldn't bite through it!"
As I retell these miserable stories, I understand that what I am
saying is intolerable, to listen to me is unpleasant, nauseating. But
since I am going to approach the joke in a strictly experimental
fashion, I should burn all of my bridges and ships from the very
outset, in fact, in advance. As the proper framework for discussion,
all apologies must be put on hold.
If
one is squeamish, there is no
point in taking up the subject. But the joke is not just crude, it is
fastidious in its own way, capricious, and always presupposes trans–
gression of the permissible.
It
simply does not exist without crossing
into forbidden territory. While asking for trouble and moral, if not
police, intervention, it seeks out "its own kind," "the worthy," and
"the initiated." Yet it will definitely be offensive to some, intolerable
and unbearable to others. That is in its nature, which the joke openly
enjoys and is thoroughly conscious of.
In general, the joke exhibits a heightened awareness of its own
genre and form.
It
reproduces itself, looks back on itself, as if it is
aware of its own identity, that it is a joke and not something else.
