Baudelaire’s essay on laughter (1855) was conceived a decade earlier and forms part of a broader study on caricature that was never completed. Like every coherent view on laughter, it is combined with a theory of the comic.

To vengeful, malicious, and diabolical laughter, he contrasts poetic laughter, the seraphic smile of innocence. The usual laughter of diabolical origin, marked by evil, is a sign of the fall from paradisiacal bliss. Man, convinced of his superiority over others, delights in the weaknesses of his fellow human, bites and punishes with his laughter. That is why the Wise does not laugh; he is untouched by the vulgarity of laughter.

Here, Baudelaire acts not only as an artist but also as a moralist. Elevating laughter to the broader sphere of the comic, he distinguishes the usual, dual, exemplary comic, and the absolute, unified, and innocent comic of high aesthetics. The comic is rooted in the one who laughs and not in the object of laughter, and for the comic to exist, two beings must be present: the exception is the great artist, who is dual, permanently divided, simultaneously himself and the other whom he can ridicule.

This absolute comic, the grotesque, is found less in the rational, Cartesian French tradition and more in the countries of spleen. Excellent examples are offered by English pantomime or the fantastic tales of the German Hoffmann. Here, the moral dimension and guilt disappear before the absolute, benevolent laughter that is closer to a child’s smile.