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Ritual Clowns and Symbolical Behaviour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Laura Makarius

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The first Satan presented a visage of dubious sex... Round his purple tunic, a serpent wound its iridescent body in the manner of a belt... From this live girdle hung shining knives and surgical instruments, alternating with phials filled with sinister fluids. His right hand clasped another phial—its contents glowing red, and carrying for label the odd words: “Drink; this is my blood, a perfect cordial...”

Baudelaire

Chosen by English-speaking anthropologists to designate the ritual buffoons discovered among the North American Indians, in Africa and in Oceania, the word “clown” is no misnomer. Our circus clowns are the descendants of these puzzling ceremonial figures, and it is perhaps thanks to their filiation to them (confirmed, as we shall see, by etymology) that our spleenish makers of laughter owe their fascination and their capacity to survive the vicissitudes of the stage. But we shall also see that in tribal society a clown becomes a clown only in a subsidiary way, the origins of this figure going back to a complex of causes having little to do with the jocularity assumed to be his unique purpose to arouse, but which overlays and conceals the true nature of his original role.

Translated by Raoul Makarius.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 18 , Issue 69 , March 1970 , pp. 44 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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