Topical Guide 203
Mark Dorset
Tears and Laughter; Sorrow and Solace
Grandmother had died during the year, and our presence in the house was supposed to cheer Grandfather up, to keep the place from echoing with sorrow and loneliness. We felt that we hadn’t succeeded, and we had become convinced that we couldn’t have succeeded, that we should have known that Grandfather felt the loss of my grandmother too strongly for us to make him forget it for long. …
I told him what I had told only Albertine before, that I wanted to write a book, and in the confessional safety of the darkness, the security of this familiar setting and sympathetic audience, I felt myself ready to try to tell him all about the book, the impossibly big book, that I wanted to write.
“That’s good,” he said, before I had a chance to say any of that. “That’s very good. Make sure that there’s a laugh on every page.” …
In a little while, when he came upstairs, I heard him chuckling, and so ignorant was I of the way life really is that I thought his sorrow must have driven him mad. I didn’t understand at all that the memories accumulated during years of happiness could weigh enough to balance so large a loss, or that the mind will sometimes find a way to free the heart from pain.Little Follies, “Call Me Larry”
Where once Imagination on daring wing
Reached out to the Eternal, full of hope,
Now, that the eddies of time have shipwrecked chance on chance,
She is contented with a narrow scope.
Care makes her nest forthwith in the heart’s deep places,
And there contrives her secret sorrows,
Rocks herself restlessly, destroying rest and joy;
And always she is putting on new faces,
Will appear as your home, as those that you love within it,
As fire or water, poison or steel;
You tremble at every blow that you do not feel
And what you never lose you must weep for every minute.
Observe also that it is with his tears that man washes the afflictions of man, and that it is with his laughter that sometimes he soothes and charms his heart. . . .
Baudelaire, “On the Essence of Laughter,” translated by Jonathan Mayne
The extent to which our sense of humor can help us to maintain our sanity is the extent to which it moves beyond jokes, beyond wit, beyond laughter itself. It must constitute a frame of mind, a point of view, a deep-going far-reaching attitude to life.
Shangri-La; Fantasy Land; Oz; Neverland; Raratonga
Albertine and I went up to bed, and when we got in and pulled the sheet over us and lay quietly in the dark, I heard Grandfather on the porch, rocking his chair and making the springs wheeze, tapping his foot, and whistling the tune to “Rarotonga,” and then, suddenly, loudly, he began to sing:
Come on, honey, come with me
Sail away, across the sea
To Rarotonga,
Where the nights are longa
And our love will grow much stronga.
Oh, honey, won’t you come alonga,
Across the sea
To Rarotonga—
With me?Little Follies, “Call Me Larry’
My Belief then is, that in Fable-land somewhere Ethel and Clive are living most comfortably together. . . . But for you, dear friend, it is as you like. You may settle your Fable-land in your own fashion. Anything you like happens in Fable-land. . . . Ah, happy, harmless, Fable-land, where these things are! Friendly reader! may you and the author meet there on some future day! He hopes so; as he yet keeps a lingering hold of your hand, and bids you farewell with a kind heart.
See also: Arcadia, Eden TG 40; Arcadia; Shangri-La; Fantasy Land; Raratonga TG 46; Idyllic Landscapes, Arcadia, Shangri-La, Beauty Spots TG 58; Laughter TG 29
The evening’s short subject:
[more to come on Friday, February 25, 2022]
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