Paradox Box

THE ABSURD    -    the fugitive healer

Shall we laugh or shall we cry when we view the complexity, the paradox, the mystery of this little portion of the universe that we are given called life?

What is it that we recognise in Bernard Buffet's painting "The Clown" which shows, in the geometry of his style, an angular tear on an angular cheek?

In Afrikaans, the Dutch-derived language of southern Africa, we have a saying "Ja-nee" inadequately translated as Yes-No.  Usually the speaker says it with irony, taking a step back from the blind simplification of life.  It's a kind of shrug.  It says, What can we do in the face of this fundamental duality of things?

I've asked myself, Why is it that in the best humour, the best comedy, there is often a touch of sadness?  I remember the movie "Mrs Doubtfire" with Robin Williams, one of the funniest films to come from the US and yet having an underlying heartbreak in it.  In a scene from Ionesco's "The Bald Prima Donna", a man probes a woman extensively on where he has seen her before, only to discover that she is his wife.  And Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" is subtitled a tragi-comedy.

Is it that this duality gives onto hope?  A wise hope that has no illusions.  This would be absurdity at its most positive, with an ironical wink.  And at its darkest... well, a pure darkness does not exist with the Absurd, I think.  There is always something odd, crazily disjointed about it, which keeps one from disappearing below the slag line of final despair.

The Absurd is not a good bedfellow with religion, at least, of the fundamentalist strains.  It is often experienced in a momentary way and can't be straited in the confines of theory.  If we contemplate Camus' Sisyphus, we have to admit that the image is not entirely devoid of a smile... We could even see the man rolling the rock as funny.

Empty yourself of hope, and live, Camus says.  To my way of thinking and feeling, this is the entry to despair, a humourless state.  The Absurd - and he's the high priest of it - has gone.

The Absurd is a subversive vision of the world.  It undermines the solemn complacency of much religion; it undermines the fixed eyed gloating of the nihilist.

The Polish play "Police" portrays the socialist state in which crime has been totally eradicated.  In this perfection there is the danger that the police, the cornerstone of the state's authority, will lose their function and so, to prove his fidelity to the system, an individual becomes a rebel - to reinforce the need for police.

It is the quality of inflexibility to which the Absurd is inimical.  The absurdities of ideologues and politicians are the bread-and-butter of satirical cartoonists.

The proponents of apartheid in South Africa (1948-1993) saw nothing strange in the following scenario:  coloured usherettes in a cinema may show the white patrons to their seats, but may not watch the film.  Recognising the absurdity of this privately might have sugared the ideological pill for them.

The quality of offsetting "the horror, the horror" is healing, but it remains at the edge of discomfort.  The Absurd is paradox;  it is chiarascuro.  It is impure of essence;  it punctures perfection.  It gives God a sense of irony.

The Absurd varies.  It can be gently humorous or aridly desolate.  The latter veers to solemnity and away from the eye's glint.  It keeps its heart opalescent;  it shies clear of definition.  

Source
my soul