An italian view of humor

University of Northern Iowa

An Italian View of Humor Humour by Paola Bellezza Review by: W. D. Howells The North American Review, Vol. 173, No. 539 (Oct., 1901), pp. 567-576 Published by: University of Northern Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25105235 . Accessed: 22/03/2012 14:18
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AN ITALIAN VIEW OF HUMOR*
BY W. D. HO WELLS.

(First Paper.) jolly frankness of the author's own phrase can best give of the amiable book by Signor Paolo Bellezza, which has lately come to my hand from Italy, and which 1 should like to makethe excuse for a few words of my own on the matter it Tile a notion of his who says, of another quotes a countryman work, "This book is not made out of books," and then he adds, it is "Of this work of mine I must confess exactly the contrary; made exclusively out of books; it is a great lot of stuff gathered treats of. He
from everywhere except from my brain. . . . It is a neck

lace of pearlsstrung upon a slender cord; that, I have put there; the pearls have been furnished me by the most famous jewelers, This said, I can?without native and foreign. being accused of as an article it to my respectable customers pride?recommend of great value and of absolute novelty." It is for his re the to protest that the stringer of the pearls undervalues which is no inanimate string, but a sensitivenerve, cord, The alive with fine sympathy for the pearls it holds together. a compilation, infused but a compilation book is indeed mainly of the com and the cultivation with the taste, the intelligence, in claiming that it who is, perhaps, only just to himself piler, humor with a certain amplitude, is "the first study treating of viewer slender and who is surely forms and manifestations," and inits multiple in hoping "that it may prove acceptable at least as an at right a study ought to take." I will tempt in the direction that such say even more for him (unless it should be saying less), and
add that among Bellezza. Milano. his many saws and instances, a Beneficio his saws are Istituto some dei

*Paola Rachitici.

"Humour." 1900.

Strenna

del Pi?

568

THE NORTHAMERICAN

REVIEW.

times the best; the nerve is finer than the message it carries, the cord more precious than the pearl. But undoubtedly most read ers will find pleasure in his book because of the instances, though they should all the more,
saws. L

therefore,

be admonished

to regard

the

treats by precept and example, in a series of Signor Bellezza fifteen chapters, of what humor isand is not; of the essence of taken of humorous illustrations humor; of humorous wisdom; from Dickens; of humorous of the ugly phases sensibility; of humor; of humorous of hu of the whims motives; of the psychology of the humorous of the humorist; morists; view of shipwreck, earthquake, misery, famine and cannibalism; of mad and anomalous of grisly humor, humor; concerning suicides andexecutions; of humor in art; of the balance murders, of humor in modem of the classic home of humor. literature; In all these chapters he practices such sane restraint in the selec tion of his proofs that he can rarely be accused of what may be called Lombrosoism; but, when accused, he cannot be wholly ac of it. This is not so heinous in a countryman of Lom quitted warn the reader of, and it will be...