Laughter
Philip Roth: In your last book, though, something else is involved. In a little parable you compare the laughter of angels with the laughter of the devil.
The devil laughs because God's world seems senseless to him; the angels laugh with joy because everything in God's world has its meaning.
Milan Kundera: Yes, man uses the same physiologic manifestations- laughter- to express two different metaphysical attitudes.
Someone's hat drops on a coffin in a freshly dug grave, the funeral loses its meaning and laughter is born.
Two lovers race through the meadow, holding hands, laughing. Their laughter has nothing to do with jokes or humor, it is the serious laughter of angels expressing their joy of being.
Both kinds of laughter belong among life's pleasures, but when it also denotes a dual apocalypse:
the enthusiastic laughter of angel-fanatics, who are so convinced of their world's significance that they are ready to hang anyone not sharing their joy.
And the other laughter, sounding from the opposite side, which proclaims that everything has become meaningless, that even funerals are ridiculous and group sex a mere comical pantomime.
Human life is bounded by two chasms: fanaticism on one side, absolute skepticism on the other.
The Most Original Book of the Season
Philip Roth interviews Milan Kundera (30/11/1980)
