The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

The greatest of spirit-nature pairs and the most orthodox is, of course, Don Quixote—Sancho Panza. Unlike Prospero and Caliban, their relationship is harmonious and happy; unlike Tamino and Papageno, it is dialectical; each affects the other. Further, both they and their relationship are comic; Don Quixote is comically mad, Sancho Panza is comically sane, and each finds the other a lovable figure of fun, an endless source of diversion. It is this omnipresent comedy that makes the book orthodox; present the relationship as tragic and the conclusion is manichean, present either or both of the char­acters as serious, and the conclusion is pagan or pelagian. The man who takes seriously the command of Christ to take up his cross and follow Him must, if he is serious, see himself as a comic figure, for he is not the Christ, only an ordinary man, yet he believes that the command, "Be ye perfect," is seri­ously addressed to himself. Worldly "sanity" will say, "I am not Christ, only an ordinary man. For me to think that I can become perfect would be madness. Therefore, the command cannot seriously be addressed to me." The other can only say, "It is madness for me to attempt to obey the command, for it seems impossible; nevertheless, since I believe it is ad­dressed to me, I must believe that it is possible"; in proportion as he takes the command seriously, that is, he will see himself as a comic figure. To take himself seriously would mean that he thought of himself, not as an ordinary man, but as Christ.

For Christ is not a model to be imitated, like Hector, or Aristotle's megalopsych, but the Way to be followed, If a man thinks that the megalopsych is a desirable model, all he has to do is to read up how the megalopsych behaves and imitate him, e.g., he will be careful, when walking, not to swing his arms.

But the Way cannot be imitated, only followed; a Chris­tian who is faced with a moral problem cannot look up the answer in the Gospels. If someone, for instance, were to let his hair and beard grow till he looked like some popular pious picture of Christ, put on a white linen robe and ride into town on a donkey, we should know at once that he was either a madman or a fake. At first sight Don Quixote's madness seems to be of this kind. He believes that the world of the Romances is the real world and that, to be a knight-errant, all he has to do is imitate the Romances exactly. Like Lear, he cannot distinguish imaginative possibilities from actualities and treats analogies as identities; Lear thinks a stool is his daughter, Don Quixote thinks windmills are giants, but their manias are not really the same. Lear might be said to be suffer­ing from worldly madness. The worldly man goes mad when the actual state of affairs becomes too intolerable for his amour- pro-pre

to accept; Lear cannot face the fact that he is no longer a man of power or that he has brought his present situation upon himself by his unjust competition. Don Quixote's mad­ness, on the other hand, might be called holy madness, for amour-propre has nothing to do with his delusions. If his mad­ness were of Lear's kind, then, in addition to believing that he must imitate the knight-errants of old, he would have en­dowed himself in their imagination with their gifts, e.g., with the youth and strength of Amadis of Gaul: but he does noth­ing of the kind; he knows that he is past fifty and penniless, nevertheless, he believes he is called to be a knight-errant. The knight-errant sets out to win glory by doing great deeds and to win the love of his lady, and whatever trials and defeats he may suffer on the way, in the end he triumphs. Don Quixote, however, fails totally; he accomplishes nothing, he does not win his lady, and, as if that were not ignominious enough, what he does win is a parody of what a knight-errant is supposed to win, for he does, in fact, become famous and admired—as a madman. If his were a worldly madness,

amour- propre would demand that he add to his other delusions the delusion of having succeeded, the delusion that the welcome he receives everywhere is due to the fame of his great deeds (a delusion which his audience do everything to encourage), but Don Quixote is perfecdy well aware that he has failed to do anything which he set out to do.

At the opposite pole to madness stands philistine realism.

Madness says, "Windmills are giants"; philistine realism says, "Windmills are only windmills; giants are only giants," and then adds "Windmills really exist because they provide me with flour; giants are imaginary and do not exist because they provide me with nothing." (A student of psychoanalysis who says, "Windmills and giants are only phallic symbols," is both philistine and mad.) Madness confuses analogies with identi­ties, philistine realism refuses to recognize analogies and only admits identities; neither can say, "Windmills are like giants."