The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

Caliban was once innocent but has been corrupted; his initial love for Prospero has turned into hatred. The terms "in­nocent" and "corrupt" cannot be applied to Ariel because he is beyond good and evil; he can neither love nor hate, he can only play. It is not sinful of Eve to imagine the possibility of being as a god knowing good and evil: her sin lay in desiring to realize that possibility when she knew it was forbidden her, and her desire did not come from her imagination, for imagina­tion is without desire and is, therefore, incapable of dis­tinguishing between permitted and forbidden possibilities; it only knows that they are imaginatively possible. Similarly, imagination cannot distinguish the possible from the impos­sible; to it the impossible is a species of the genus possible, not another genus. I can perfecdy well imagine that I might be a hundred feet high or a champion heavyweight boxer, and I do myself no harm in so doing, provided I do so playfully, with­out desire. I shall, however, come to grief if I take the possi­bility seriously, which I can do in two ways. Desiring to become a heavyweight boxer, I may deceive myself into think­ing that the imaginative possibility is a real possibility and waste my life trying to become the boxer I never can become. Or, desiring to become a boxer, but realizing that it is, for me, impossible, I may refuse to relinquish the desire and turn on God and my neighbor in a passion of hatred and rejection be­cause I cannot have what I want. So Richard III, to punish existence for his misfortune in being born a hunchback, de­cided to become a villain. Imagination is beyond good and evil. Without imagination I remain an innocent animal, unable to become anything but what I already am. In order to become what I should become, therefore, I have to put my imagination to work, and limit its playful activity to imagining those possi­bilities which, for me, are both permissible and real; if I allow it to be the master and play exacdy as it likes, then I shall remain in a dreamlike state of imagining everything I might become, without getting round to ever becoming anything. But, once imagination has done its work for me, to the degree that, with its help, I have become what I should become, imagination has a right to demand its freedom to play without any limitations, for there is no longer any danger that I shall take its play seriously. Hence the relation between Prospero and Ariel is contractual, and, at the end of the drama, Ariel is released.

If The Tempest is overpessimistic and manichean, The Magic Flute

is overoptimistic and pelagian. At the end of the opera a double wedding is celebrated; the representative of the spiritual, Tamino, finds his happiness in Pamina and has attained wisdom while the chorus sing:

Es siegte die Starke und kronet zum Lohn.

Die Schonheit und Weisheit mit ewiger Kron

and, at the same time, the representative of the natural, Pa- pageno is rewarded with Papagena, and they sing together:

Erst einen kleinen Papageno Dann eine kleine Papagena Dann wieder einen Papageno Dann wieder eine Papagena

expressing in innocent humility the same attitude which Cali­ban expresses in guilty defiance when Prospero accuses him of having tried to rape Miranda,

O ho, O ho! Would't had been done.

Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else

This isle with Calibans.

Tamino obtains his reward because he had had the courage to risk his life undergoing the trials of Fire and Water; Papageno obtains his because he has had the humility to refuse to risk his life even if the refusal will mean that he must remain single. It is as if Caliban, when Prospero offered to adopt him and educate him, had replied: "Thank you very much, but clothes and speech are not for me; It is better I stay in the jungle."

According to The Magic Flute, it is possible for nature and spirit to coexist in man harmoniously and without conflict, pro­vided both keep to themselves and do not interfere with each other, and that, further, the natural has the freedom to refuse to be interfered with.