A Clown’s Laughter Specificity: From “Anesthesia of Heart” to “Synesthesia of Love”

Abstract

The article provides insight into the insufficiently studied area of synesthesia in the art of clowning. The research methodology is based on the collection of essays by A. Berson “Laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic”. Herein laughter is regarded as a social creative proofreader, which signals that the creative driving force has been lost in the phenomenon/process. Besides, the author refers to the theory of A.G. Kozintsev. It states that at the stage of the “language Rubicon”, anthropogenesis makes an evolutionary leap. After it, with the creation of language, a human being retains a direct two-element connection between signals and messages (inherited from animals), in particular, laughter. The latter is seen as something common between human being and animal. The difference is that a human responds to external signals not automatically, but selectively. The hypothesis of the study is that in the comic arts the connection between laughter stimulus and the response is formalized. The exception is the art of clowning, which goes beyond the comic, back to the tragic. It appears as a manifestation of human creative evolution, associated with the “language Rubicon”. The article makes a point that a clown’s laughter results from the multilevel structure of the psyche and is in a perfect step with “synesthesia of heart”, love and empathy for the clown’s character/masque. On the one hand, this unites it with the laughter of animals. On the other hand, this sharply distinguishes it by a strong feeling of laughter drama and tragedy. The laughter in a masque transforms tragedy into comedy. This gives reason to consider a clown’s laughter in terms of synesthesia and addiction. The article is based on the author’s report “Specificity of synesthesia as a form of world perception and worldview among satirists, comedians, clowns”, presented at the conference “The phenomenon of synesthesia in the interdisciplinary space of scientific knowledge” (October 22-23, 2018 in Moscow, Russia).