Possibilities for being human
Contents
Possibilities for being human
The different ways of looking at Cervantes’ Don Quixote to us reveal something deeply human that expresses itself here. Something which is perhaps not so easy to grasp precisely because we are all already familiar with it and not always aware of it. What is initially irritating is when both protagonists are seen as separate entities. But if both, like with Heine, are seen as respective possibilities of being human, if they are seen in several dimensions, so to speak, familiar images emerge that can be understood almost without further considerations because they carry a universal‐archetypal knowledge within them: On the one hand, there is the gaunt, almost disembodied, ascetic and tall Quixote. He represents the spiritual dimension of man, in his striving for and advocacy of values and his search for meaning. This aspect is overdrawn by an »error in time« in its reference to values long since lost. This provokes us to look more closely, to see him, the tragic hero – also sympathetically – in his seemingly senseless attachment to long‐gone values of chivalry, in the face of a modern age that can only muster an amused shake of the head. He is confronted with an environment that, as in the second book, plays a cynical game with him with all kinds of mischief. Here the reader is confronted with the dubiousness of his own search for meaning, the relativity and contingency of his own set of values. On the other hand, there is the cowardly peasant who is devoted to pleasure and physicality, who embodies the reality principle of the common sense, shrewdness, and opportunism, and thus represents the guardian function of the psycho‐physical dimension of being human. He also knows that he knows nothing and he therefore adheres to an unreflective unbreakable loyalty that follows from what »one« does because that is what one does when one has eaten from a same bowl, Panza expresses this:
»…and if I were clever, I would have had to leave my master in the lurch long ago. But that is my fate for once, that is my misfortune for once: I cannot help it, I must follow him everywhere; we are from the same place, I have eaten his bread, I love him, he is grateful, he has given me his donkeys; and above all I am faithful, and consequently it is out of the question that anything could ever separate us but shovel and spade.« (Cervantes, 2005, 804).
Only when envisioned together, only in the integration of spiritual, psychological and physical dimensions, does this duo produce the familiar image of the integrity of the human that reassures us and that we already understand by being familiar with. Our restlessness only arises when we are faced with their separateness.
This is illustrated in considerations of the second part of the stories: Here the protagonists are separated in their experiences over a long distance. The detached spirit becomes disillusioned in the face of a world that camouflages itself to him as he illusioned it. And he becomes »reasonable« after all at the end of a humiliating charade – on his deathbed – due to circumstances. The opportunism of Panza and his practical wisdom prove themselves in intuitive and spectacularly Solomon‐like decisions, but these are not accessible to his intellect, they follow straight from his lack of education, which allows him to listen without prejudice and to look closely. Thus, the one does not come into life without the other and the other does not come into fulfilment without the one. – This aspect, the unity of the human being as a dynamic spiritual, mental and physical entity, is the real fascination of this story for us.