Bonjour, Narkissos! In regard to the notion of identity, I would like to offer yet another quotation from Kundera's Le Rideau, and this for two reasons. 1.) Ca me parle, le bouquain et 2.) Je suis paresseux comme tout. I'm really lazy, and I can save myself time and effort by quoting intelligent people. That way, I don't have to think [much].
While discussing a passage in Cervantes' Don Quixote, in which Don Quixote meets a mad [insane] poet, Kundera writes: "We are laughing not because someone is being ridiculed, mocked, or even humiliated but because a reality is abruptly revealed as ambiguous, things lose their apparent meaning, the man before us is not what he thought himself to be. That is humor (the humor Octavio Paz saw as the Modern Era's 'great invention', due to Cervantes)." Employing paradox, Kundera states in regard to Don Quixote de la Mancha: "How shall we define his identity? He is the man he is not."
And in regard to your excellent point about laughter, Kundera explains how Rabelais coined a neologism from the Greek language to describe people who are incapable of laughter; he called them agelasts.
There has long been a question posed; it's been around long enough so as to seem trite. But here it is: "Imagine yourself stranded on a desert island for a year. Which [fill in a given number, but for the purpose of example, let's say "three']] books would you choose to "accompany" you during your stay on the island? Speaking strictly for myself, I would pick the five books of Rabelais, Cervantes' Don Quixote, and Shakespeare's complete works. I suppose that makes me a true "Renaissance man." As a matter of fact, were I allowed two more books, I would choose Erasmus' In Praise of Folly, and any novel by Umberto Eco [Of course, Eco is twentieth century, or is he?]
