The humble story of Don Quixote: reflections on the birth of the modern novel

IV. Don Quixote’s Madness and Modernity

c h a p t e r i v Don Quixote’s Madness and Modernity Old Madness and the Sacred The traditional fate of the fool in general, and the madman in particular, was no better than that of the rogue. In fact, it could be argued that it was much worse. Madness has usually been seen as a more radical form of marginal existence (in the sense of differentiation or distance from the social norm) than roguery. roguery. roguery And in premodern society this deeper marginality automatically meant a deeper association with the old sacred. The process of desacralization that brings about modernity had to operate at an even deeper level. In other words, if it was difficult enough to rescue the literary rogue, the picaro, from its traditional victimizing representation, as we have just seen with the aid of the two contrary approaches of Alemán and Quevedo, it should have been even more difficult to do it with a madman. Cervantes did not have it any easier than either one of the two masters of the picaresque. But he succeeded where they failed. And I would also like to suggest that the fact that he succeeded with a madman rather than with a rogue (that he was 86 dealing with madness rather than with delinquency or criminality) may itself have meaningful implications worth exploring. I think that even today it is easier to admit that a rogue is not always, inevitably , a rogue than it is to admit that a madman is not always, inevitably, a madman. Even today, the general view seems to be that madness encompasses the totality of the individual human being more tenaciously, more radically , than roguery or even criminality. In fact, when criminal behavior reaches a certain degree of violent inevitability, we associate it with madness: then we call the criminal a psychopath or a sociopath. In premodern, traditionbound society, this totalizing character of madness is inseparable from its association with the sacred (indeed, social historians have addressed this association for over a century now). Madness was conceived as something that struck from above or from outside and turned the individual into a special, different kind of human being, a very ambivalent human being. On the one hand, the madman was too dangerous to approach, not only dangerous to individuals, but dangerous to the social body; the madman was a witness to the possibility of a total collapse of the community, a complete breakdown of all cultural differences. On the other hand, the madman was also the carrier of the antidote to that same disease. He held the secret of the defense against that collapsing danger. In other words, the madman was clearly a sacrificial figure. His erratic behavior bore the mark of “the sacrificial crisis,” in Girardian terms. To the best of my knowledge, Anton Zijderveld, a sociologist, has the deepest understanding of the sacrificial character of folly or madness in a primitive community. This is how he describes it: [In] his myths and rituals “primitive” man transfers himself to the primeval time prior to history in which he becomes the contemporary of the gods and shares their work of creation. This again throws light on the eerie behaviour of the ceremonial fool: he is the representative of the primeval chaos, the “tohowabohu” which existed prior to the creation of the cosmos. The anarchic behaviour of these ritual clowns demonstrates in a lively manner what the raw material has been, out of which the gods once created the cosmos, the present order—nature, society, culture. It is indeed a regression—a mythic “mimesis” of “illud tempus”....... Ceremonial folly...... is a dangerous activity , which can only be executed anonymously [i.e., with masks] and ritually. But it is also a necessary activity....... The behaviour of these revolting fools...... demonstrates, in a vivid and very concrete manner, what would happen to the participants in sociDon Quixote’s Madness and Modernity 87 ety should they decide to abandon their culture.......: they would change into cultural protoplasm [i.e., complete undifferentiation], into witless and revolting monsters. (148–49) Fools and madmen have also been perceived as possessing a particularly penetrating kind of knowledge, even prophetic powers. It is this ambivalent sacred status that keeps the madman, an object of public scorn and derision, a scapegoat figure, also at the center of political and social power, in the role, for example, of the court...