Is laughing harder than crying?

JESUS WEPT, BUT DID HE LAUGH?

“Virgin and Laughing Child” is unveiled as Leonardo da Vinci’s only surviving sculpture

I was enchanted when I first saw this image of a laughing Baby Jesus which Leonardo is believed to have  created when he was  nineteen years old.

We have instances of  the weeping of Jesus described in the new Testament.  But not of his  happy laughter. It must have been difficult for  a person who knew so much of the evil men do to laugh. 

But as  a life long student of comedy, I have concluded that  comedy is much harder than tragedy.  Writers know how to bring tears, but they are not so sure of  how  to incite laughter.  And when they do  and do it often, they can become very famous.  But  we are more aware of the rage and sadness behind many comedians. It erupts when they  let us see it, and it is what actually gives the bite to their work.

Think of  the many comics who have committed suicide.   

Most recently Brody  and most famous Robin Williams.  They join a long list of comics who have used their rage to fuel their brilliant  comedy and finally the rage  took over.

I have known a couple of  very funny people in my life and both  are raging underneath.  It is the  knowledge they have of the "WAY OF THE WORLD" and the way they exploit that knowledge for laughter that jolts us all.

Think of how many times a great comic  moment  has perched on the fulcrum of despair. The best Shakespearean example is  no doubt Falstaff.  But the rage and bitterness when his old boon companion Prince Harry spurns him is volcanic.

Or another Shakespeare  comic butt is Malvolio with his cross- garters, but he also  quivers with rage when he  finds out that the joke is on him.

The secret of laughter is its evanescence:

"What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies not plenty; Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure."

So we must laugh and love  when we still can. 

Why is Dante's great masterpiece called  THE DIVINE COMEDY?

Because of its ending--it ends happily. But first we  have had to pass through the Inferno and the Purgatorio to make it to Paradiso.

Comics know this: their comedy is erected against their knowledge of the darkness of human experience.  It insists on finding something to laugh about and love in the grimness of human  life.

We all must  borrow some of the PANACHE  of Cyrano de Bergerac and the insistence on tilting with the windmills of this world of the heroic Don QUIXOTE.

We must not wallow in despair. Look at the  laughing  Baby Jesus and know that He laughed all the while He knew the Cross was waiting for Him.  

lay before him.