67 (Bundle 3.)

Victory, the race, speed, the team of horses...

I like these spectacles that present a fantastic nature to me, whether they embellish real nature like the scenery of an opera, or display its absurdities like the dogs’ dance, or finally give me a clearer image of some abstract word, like those performances of Astley’s where one learns so well what the words speed, flying (figuratively), etc., mean. I shall speak for a few moments of the latter’s spectacle and characterize its most striking tableaux.

1. Learned pig. This presents only the sheer mechanism of an animal trained in movements and combinations whose result produces some effects like those of intelligence, but presupposes no intelligence in the animal beyond that of linking given words with this or that particular movement. It is a cold spectacle, without any interest. The only remarkable observation it can occasion is this. The animal which performs almost human movements—the animal also, despite its nature, has an almost human gait and physiognomy.

7-11-15. The sedan chair. The woman spinning and the promenade. Here the imitation of human attitudes is more marked, more interesting, and has more effect. The ridiculous, which is never satisfying unless its effect is moral, is nowhere more in place than in these three tableaux, where the dogs make us laugh by copying our pomp in tableau 7, our ambition to please and be looked at in tableau 11; in tableau 15, which is that of the woman spinning, the ridiculous arises solely from the contrast between the features and bearing of the little dog that spins and the occupation imposed on it.

The tableaux presented by the monkey are much less interesting. This animal has too many traits in common with man for its imitation of us to have that purity of illusion which, in all imitations, is the principal cause of the pleasure they produce. Too much reality mingles with these kinds of representation. Besides, in copying man this animal makes him deformed and base rather than laughable. In copying us, the little dogs make perceptible only the extravagance of our fashions and manners, whereas the monkey, whose features strongly express a vicious disposition in the manner of men, is fit only to sadden us with this image of our depravity. The former, in their performances, are also interesting for the expression of their timid docility which shows through at every moment; the other shows us only an impudent creature satisfying itself by surrendering to the worst genius of all, that of imitation. Fearful with baseness and bold with effrontery... In the tableaux the horses present, one believes oneself transported among the [Honyhnhums?], and sometimes among the poets. See the tableaux one might call Victory, the race, speed, the team of horses.