Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist
From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.
“1. Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph.
2. Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously.
3. Laughter is the bark of delight of a gregarious animal at the proximity of its kind.
4. Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion.
5. Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.
6. Laughter is the emotion of tragic delight.
7. Laughter is the female of Tragedy.
8. Laughter is the strong elastic fish, caught in Styx, springing and flapping about until it dies.
9. Laughter is the sudden handshake of mystic violence and the anarchist.
10. Laughter is the mind sneezing.
11. Laughter is the one obvious commotion that is not complex, or in expression dynamic.
12. Laughter does not progress. It is primitive, hard and unchangeable.”
"Inferior Religions" (1917), cited from Lawrence Rainey (ed.) Modernism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) pp. 208-9.
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