"Don't be scared, companion,
for men like me,
if they cry, it's out of joy,
if they laugh, it's out of pain."
Augusto Ferrán.
Let's say it frankly. All of us are as sensitive to crying as we are to laughter. We often burst into loud laughter watching a comedy by a humorist whom we consider, however, perfectly stupid.
-What nonsense! -we exclaim-. What an animal the author must be!
And we continue laughing heartily, without the slightest disguise, taking for granted that it is not our current "self" who is really laughing but rather, my "self" prior to us; my "ancestral self."
-We are above this category of wit -we seem to say-; but our grandparents would have had so much fun here!
And yet, when a drama, unless it's Shakespeare, brings tears to our eyelids, what efforts we make to hide such displays of emotion! Why should we be so modest about our tears if we are so unashamed of our laughter?
It is generally believed that tears demonstrate tenderness, goodness, love for one's neighbor, and, if this belief were accurate, I agree that it would be prudent to conceal it, because, if we didn't, the least bad thing that could happen to us at the end of the show would be having to walk home, dispossessed of our last euro by some friend with psychological inclinations. But I don't believe that the philanthropist's tear is easier than the misanthrope's. Perhaps laughter reveals, better than crying, a certain purity of feelings, although it is likely that crying, like laughter, almost never occurs in the theater except due to excitations as artificial as onion juice or tickling. Or is the action of a jarring scream on our eardrum less mechanical than that of an acid in contact with our lacrimal glands?
Descartes stated that "true pain has no tears as true joy has no laughter." And yet, popular saying tells us that "the face is the mirror of the soul." And we seem to divine in the expression of a face the pain or joy that affects the soul. Descartes tells us that the pain that cries or the joy that laughs are not the true pain and joy, from which it would seem to follow that they are only their expressive mask. There is no tragic mask without tears nor comic mask without laughter.
Undoubtedly, there is no greater dishonor in crying than in laughing, and if this is so, why shouldn't we cry publicly with the same ease with which we laugh? A friend would tell something funny at the gathering, and, as usual, we would all celebrate his wit with great laughter. Then, another friend would tell us a pathetic story, and, for five minutes, the entire gathering would cry real tears over the coffee cups. Life would then be much more diverse than it is now, and certain men and women of melancholic humor, who are currently ostracized in society, could play a brilliant role. And it is that, as the poet said: "You laugh when I tell you / that you are the cause of my ills: / Poor woman!, you don't even / know how to laugh in time."
Francisco Arias Solis
