My aunt Aurora died in a Belgrade hospital on January 13, 1983. The letter from my parents arrived only today, ten days after she was cremated, buried, and forgotten without pomp. With a delay imposed by transcontinental communications I rebel and reject the verdict. She deserves to stay. Perhaps this makes me the sole bearer of the African cackle—her wisdom and my heritage. Her death will be vindicated only insofar as my own laughter now acquires a new and irresistible shade—the shade of primordial ignorance and disbelief. (Laughter.) Welcome back, aunt Aurora!

Addendum I (November 28, 1984)

This is still nothing but a project. The acquisition is real, though. Primitive laughter, that is, laughter without ulterior motives of any kind, remains at the center of my expectations about my own development. Without it, without the hope of eventual release from my ponderous thoughts and my bloated plans, every moment of my existence would become unbearable. Indeed, my resistance to doubt concerning my daily toil is perhaps increased to the extent that a promise of humorous oblivion appears secured. And this cannot but enhance the drive with which I embark upon so many dreary enterprises. The cunning of laughter.

Addendum II (November 11, 1985)

That laughter is proper to man is a sign of our limitation, sinners that we are. But from this book many corrupt minds like yours would draw the extreme syllogism, whereby laughter is man’s end! Laughter, for a few moments, distracts the villain from fear. But law is imposed by fear, whose true name is fear of God. This book could strike the Luciferine spark that would set a new fire to the whole world, and laughter would be defined as the new art, unknown even to Prometheus, for canceling fear. And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most farsighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

From Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, New York: Warner Books, 1983 (first published in 1980), pp. 577-578.

Addendum III (December 22, 1986)

What is needed today is not a book on laughter (Aristotle, Eco), but a book of laughter (Kundera, Zinoviev): a book packed solid with sublime hilarity, ignoble guffaws, oblivious merriment, grotesque joviality, vulgar burlesque, simpleminded slapstick, indolent and proud comedy… In short, what is needed today is a book of exalted humor (Rabelais, Villon). For there is no better antidote to bureaucratic seriousness and technocratic smugness that threaten to eradicate the knowledge and appreciation of our constitutive ignorance and the underlying indeterminacy of the universe we happen to inhabit. Punctuate every sweet hope with a fart! Crush every grand design with a lascivious song of yesteryear! Embellish every consistent thought with a protracted belch!

Addendum IV (October 15, 1988)

In my admonishment about laughter I had in mind someone very much like Karl Kraus. He could both exemplify it and stand to gain by it. But he is gone for good. His city and empire are gone for good. The entire universe to which he belonged is gone for good. I may be the only damned survivor…

Addendum V (December 13, 1998)

The attempts to describe satori are always in vain, for words are but symbols coined by the discriminative intellect, and satori is beyond discrimination. Sometimes the happy man would burst into a song or an improvised poem; sometimes he merely laughed, and it is to be noted that no other school or religion or philosophy has used, as Zen deliberately uses, laughter as a means to a spiritual end. Roars of laughter, cleansing, healthy, ferocious laughter, are part of the Zen monk’s daily life and of those who practice Zen.

From Christmas Humphreys’ Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide, Third Edition, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962 (first published in 1951), p. 186.