a) Aspects of Jean Paul's Humor
Humor and the Sublime
This quote summarizes the idea of romantic humor as Jean Paul understood it. To begin to comprehend it we must first be acquainted with the Romantic concept of the "Sublime", as they are closely linked.
Immanuel Kant regarded the Sublime as a subjective aesthetic experience, caused by the inadequacy of the human senses to comprehend a greatness or power in nature. Kant explains in his Third Critique that this experience can be pleasurable and even purposive because it provokes the mind to think about "absolute" ideas- in fact it is the idea, and not the object which provoked it, which contains the true Sublime.
In Jean Pauls humor there is also the inadequacy of human perception in face of the Sublime, but here it doesn't serve the higher purpose of transcending the physical world and provoking meaningful thought- it simply exists as a contrast to the Sublime idea itself. Through humor we are made aware of the contrast between our limited or "finite" experience and the "infinite" ideal, a contrast which is in itself infinite and which Jean Paul calls "the Sublime in reverse". By this very contrast or separation, humor (like everything else which can be contained by our senses) remains inversely attached to the Sublime; it is this "infinity of contrast" which causes the laughter quoted above.
On the Ridiculous
The perceived "infinite lack of understanding" in an act or a situation; that is, a literary representation of "the Sublime in reverse". To my understanding, it constitutes the bridge between the purely theoretical concept of humor and the "comic modes" of literature and poetry.
The Ridiculous occurs when the audience lend their own insight and perspective to a character's actions, producing a contrast which is "infinitely absurd".
Humor as Romantic Poetry (the Comic as opposed to the Serious)
"Humor is an ambivalent attitude, a mixture of comedy and tragedy, of self-mockery and sensibility"
First, it is clear that for Jean Paul humor is a kind of variation of romantic poetry, in which the "Ideal" is present only in reverse- by "measuring the small world against the infinite world". In the words of Margaret Hale from her introduction to Horn of Oberon, it is "the embodiment of metaphysical truths in concrete details". Thus, Jean Paul identifies an "underlying earnestness" in the true comic style, which can only be heightened further by a vivid and colorful characterization.
So, in more practical terms, the Comic mode makes serious observations about human nature albeit in an allegorical manner, by focusing on details and highlighting the individual, whereas in Serious literary presentation one emphasizes the general. Jean Paul calls this comic principle "humorous sensuousness", and elaborates that humor "should overflow with witty and imaginative contrasts".
At the same time, the Comic mode differs from the Serious inasmuch as it "is fond of empty conclusions" and "delights in contradictions and impossibilities" (as further representations of the "inverse Sublime"), whereas the Serious is comprehensible to our understanding and generally ends with the most important.
Another concept which may be relevant to this study is what Richter calls "humorous subjectivity": "for every humorist, the self plays the first roll; when he can, he even introduces his personal circumstance upon the comic stage(...). So clearly the comic writer must be able to ridicule himself; but at the same time Jean Paul asserts that a comic effect can be produced only if the audience can differentiate between the author and his flawed artistic persona - that is, his characters - and doesn't confuse between the two. The audience must be aware that the (ridiculous) perspective or behaviour of the characters isn't identical to that of the author- this is true for the same reason that we normally might be amused by watching a person behave inappropriately, but not if we knew that the person is insane. Thus, the author is assigned the double roll of both "the court jester and (their) prince", the object of ridicule and the coldly aware mocker. A delicate balance must be achieved here.
Irony and Whimsy
"Irony sins equally when it shows only the face of the folly or only its serious mask"
Here Jean Paul differentiates between two opposite poles of ironic presentation: the Platonic world-irony and the whimsy; the former is associated with objectivity and understanding whereas the latter is subjective and full of imagination.
In the introduction to Horn of Oberon, M. Hale elaborates that objective irony must imitate coldly and calmly the appearance of serious literature, while in whimsy the poet "becomes" what he ridicules (making himself ridiculous). This relates again to the previous topic, concerning humorous subjectivity and the relation between the author and his artistic representation. Furthermore, Jean Paul proposes that the more comic the subject, the more naturally it will lend itself to whimsy and the harder it will become to maintain an objective irony.
On Wit
"Wit" is for Jean Paul the mental faculty of comparison. It allows the poet to first identify similarity between apparently unrelated concepts, then find dissimilarity (by distinguishing between what had previously been established as similar) and in its highest form recognizes an equality and unity of all things (in a metaphysical sense).
b) Jean Paul's Concepts in Relation with Schumann
Humor and the Sublime
Intuitively, this complex definition of humor feels much more fitting to Schumann's music than our own; also the term "infinity of contrast" can well be used to describe the innumerable shifts of mood to be found in the Humoreske and other piano cycles.
Humor as Romantic Poetry (the Comic as opposed to the Serious)
The idea of "humorous sensuousness" is perhaps the most obvious one to identify in Schumann's music and the Humoreske in particular- overflowing as it were with precisely these "witty and imaginative contrasts" and colorful characterizations. A more interesting and original parallel arises from the feeling of "underlying earnestness" which Jean Paul perceives in humor- this can help to explain the melancholy which Schumann himself attributed to the work, and which can be sensed intuitively. Perhaps it can even be helpful to bear in mind, in performance of the Humoreske, that for all it's witty and playful contrasts it belies a deeper philosophical meaning (by "helpful" I mean in this case as inspiration only- I can't say with any certainty whether this idea will effect one detail or another, the general organization of the work or nothing at all).
Another interesting parallel arises from Jean Paul's ideas about "empty conclusions" and the "contradictions and impossibilities" to be found in humor: every main section of the Humoreske, excepting the penultimate one, ends with a coda which either destabilizes the sense of tonality or modulates to a new key altogether. [Excerpts of the score to be shown in part III]
Also "contradictions and possibilities" can be found in abundance- the rhythmic divergence between the hands in the section starting from bar 289, marked Wie auser Tempo, and the sudden transition in bar 833 which follows immediately after what had appeared to be a grand conclusion, to name a few. In interpreting the Humoreske, my instinct often tells me to "smooth out" some of the more extreme contrasts or try to "justify" some of the destabilizing codas and other oddities of the work by making clear, unequivocal musical decisions (for example, separating/connecting sections with dynamics and rhythm, bringing out certain voices, etc.); but perhaps some of the contradictions and confusions inherent to the music can sometimes be left as they are, ambiguous and even illogical?
A different connection occured to me in reading Jean Pauls passage concerning the differentiation between the author and his artistic persona; the possibility of analysing music in a similar way has been discussed in the literature (Edward T. Cone, The Composer's Voice). For example, it is possible to view the performer himself as representative of the composer's complete consciousness - the equivalent of the author - and the music as representing the consciousness of the composer's assumed persona - equivalent to the character(s).
If we were to take Jean Paul's advice, how then can we acknowledge the separate existence of the artistic persona (which can be comic and ridiculous) and the pianist/composer- consciousness (which is controlling the events and therefore partly serious) in interpretation of the Humoreske? One possibility would be the addition of a third consciousness- that of the narrator. This would require a consciously different approach to some passages of the work, making them sound "objective", as opposed to the rest of the work which will be experienced in the first-person, so to speak. To clarify, this terminology is not uncommon in performance practice and it isn't necessary to go into the minutiae of piano playing which can color the music as either "objective" or "subjective"; the main challenge here would be deciding where in the work runs the line between the objective and subjective voices. If conveyed effectively, this separation between objective narrator and subjective persona implies by itself the existence of a single, controlling consciousness outside the music- that of the composer/pianist.
Irony and Whimsy
On the subject of ironic delivery, I feel that a connection can be made to the interpretation of several passages in the Humoreske which can easily be seen as speaking "ironically" rather than "literally". The section titled "Mit einigem Pomp" (bar 833) is the most obvious example: the music here evokes a sense of exaggerated, fake grandeur even without the assistance of the title, which is best translated as "somewhat pompously". Here and in other potentially ironic passages we can consider whether we prefer that the irony speak for itself in an objective manner, "imitating coldly and calmly the appearance of serious (musical) literature", or that it become explicit, even ridiculous, as in whimsy.
On Wit
While not directly connected to Schumann or the Humoreske, it is interesting to consider Jean Paul's definition of wit analogously to the practice of musical interpretation in general. Similarity and dissimilarity can thus be seen as two aspects of a musical composition which the performing artist must take into consideration, or as opposing forces to be balanced: identifying the similar and making connections within a musical work can enhance the cohesion of a performance, while clearly defining the contrasts and dissimilarities is an essential part of characterization. Finally, recognizing and conveying the overall unity of a composition, its completeness, the absolute necessity (and therefore equality) of every note, might be the highest possible achievement to which one can aspire in a performance.