Madness & the Severity of Knowledge

Madness in western literature is an archetype in & of itself. It has been utilized

thematically & extemporaneously throughout every age of western civilization both in
literature & drama. Don Quixote de la Mancha is a paramount example of the madman
satirized. In this epic, Miguel de Cervantes gives us the leadings & causes of Don
Quixote’s ailment as a man who, “spent whole days and nights over his books; and thus
with little sleeping and much reading, his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the
use of his reason,” (Cervantes, p. 58). The diagnosis that Cervantes gives to Quixote, is
that of hallucination, consistency through inconsistency & delusional thoughts of a
“genius,” or well read man, who “begins to,” as Friedrich Nietzsche claims in Human,
All Too Human, “reel and take himself for something superhuman,” (Nietzsche, p. 125).
No character –save that of one loyal and lowly peasant (Sancho Panza)– ever dares to
take the “visions” of Don Quixote literal. The reader of this epic is left to naively agree
with the claims made against this absurd hero by many characters of the story, i.e., they
are left to accept Quixote as a man of insanity. Yet, if a closer reading were to take place,
one could finalize the understanding of Quixote as a man of faith and not a man of
insanity. He prefers to believe the fantastical & fixed reality of literature, i.e., a reality of
absolutes, as opposed to the ever-changing conventional reality of his apparently secular
society. Sigmund Freud, in his tract The Interpretation of Dreams, writes that “mental
health,” is found somewhere between “the equipoise of belief and reality,” (Freud, p. 63).
If faith is, what Soren Kierkegaard estimated as the belief in something impossible;
incomprehensibly & unfathomably indemonstrable, than, the faith of Quixote in a fixed
world of fiction as a reality, is more real & apparent than the faith in an ever-changing
reality of public opinion. It is more concrete, traceable and methodical than faith in
something intangible, untraceable & unmethodical.
In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, William Shakespeare gives the
same diagnostic account of his tragic hero, Hamlet, when the young Prince delivers the
confession that he has, “of late…lost all [his] mirth, [&] forgone all customs of
exercises,” after we’ve seen him earlier in that scene also reading, “Words, words,
words,” upon the pages of his books in his library (Act II, scene II, ll. 194, 303-305). The
case, argument & parallel that could be here examined is, that an overabundance of
reading will cause a voracious reader to loose his mind in learning all that he does via
books. “So true did all this phantasmagoria from books appear to him,” writes Cervantes,
“that in his mind he accounted no other history in the world more authentic,” (Cervantes,
p. 58). To support the argument & defense of poetry as having a quality that serves a
higher form of truth than does history in the spectrum of literature (in the large realm of
literature where actions and ideas are absolute), I hereby draw from the aesthetics of
Aristotle’s Poetics, when he identifies poetry as possessing, “a more philosophical and
higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular,”
(Aristotle, p. 68). By investigating the universal element of a culture, moreover, by
delving head on into the ethos of a cultural epic poem or a tragic play, & by examining
the art of a civilization, one could learn, via literature and self-analysis, the emotional
(Dionysian) aspects of human nature & psychology, than if one were to read volumes
upon volumes of historical texts. Though the outcome is fatal or darkly self-revealing, the
estimation of what is learned is much more valuable & essential to the psychosocial
development of an idealized reader of fiction, than say, the reader of books pertaining to
human facts.
If “Human society is,” what James Joyce calls in his essay titled Drama and Life,
“the embodiment of changeless laws, which the whimsicalities and circumstances of men
and women over-wrap,” & if literature deals with, “these accidental manners and
humors,” & if drama on the other hand, deals with the “divine severity” of these
“underlying laws” exemplifying human society, than, the affirmation of Aristotle’s
claims pertaining to history & literature are made apparent & we are in the clear light of
an epistemology pertaining to the aforesaid characters of madness (Joyce, p. 38). The
validation is made complete, & one cannot help but sympathize with, or understand the
so-called accused madness of both Quixote & Hamlet. Both characters have read what
Hamlet describes as “Slanders,” that are given by a “satirical rogue,” which he “most
powerfully and potently believe[s],” & Polonius, a man of his sanity, affirms that the
words of Hamlet “be madness, yet there is method in’t,” (Act II, scene II, ll. 196, 201,
205 & 206). This is a distinction that is made between the platonic idea of spiritual forms
and their mundane material embodiments. In short, it is a seeming fact metaphysically
derived and is in an opposition to that of materialism. It is a distinction made clear in
more Nietzschean terms, between the Apollonian (rational) forces of human nature and
the Dionysian (emotional) forces of human nature.
Yet, in the minds of an audience for these heroes, there is a mental exhaustion in
process, a vital & severe lethargy of mind in formation; in short, there is a mental
breakthrough in progress, but the discovery of these truth(s) demand a sacrifice. In The
Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche writes that the “best and highest that men can acquire they
must obtain by a crime,” (Nietzsche, p. 32). The crime here is the crime of knowing (or
discovering) what Ezra Pound has suggested as an exigency. In Guide to Kulchur, Pound
suggests that, “people need poetry,” or methods of deception (myths) in order to function
in a quasi-chaotic world where “prose is NOT education but the outer courts of the same.
Beyond its doors are the mysteries. Eleusis. Things not to be spoken save in secret,” or
else one may suffer what is now termed as being ‘quixotic,’ (Pound, p. 144 & 145).
These mental breakthroughs, or “things not to be spoken,” are the Nietzschean “crimes”
that must be committed by epic or dramatic heroes that, “must in turn endure its
consequences, namely, the whole flood of sufferings and sorrows with which the
offended divinities must requite the nobly aspiring race of man,” (Nietzsche, p. 32). This
is indeed true, if one takes the Aristotelian stand of that spacious realm of drama &
literature where “poetry implies a happy gift of nature or a strain of madness,” (Aristotle,
p. 87-88). It is indeed a method by which the poet (or author), “can take the mold of any
character,” as a “gift of nature,” or can, in a bout of madness, be “lifted out of his proper
self,” (Aristotle, p. 88). This is the same observation Nietzsche had made in his inquiry
into ancient Greek composition of tragedy & the distinctions of the two kinds of poets
that such a civilization bore. “At bottom,” he writes in The Birth, “the aesthetic
phenomena is simple: if a man merely has the faculty of seeing perpetual vitality around
him, of living continually surrounded by hosts of spirits, he will be a poet. If he but feels
the impulse to transform himself and to speak form out the bodies and souls of others, he
will be a dramatist,” (Nietzsche, p. 26).
Hamlet was indeed a tragic poet, for he did utter that his “play’s the
thing/Wherein [he’ll] catch the conscious of the King,” after criticizing the state of
nature, man, the nature of drama & the importance of actors, (Act II, scene II, ll. 617-
618). The eloquence of Don Quixote’s words, as when he addresses two whores as if they
were maidens, adopting the lines of a poem & pawning them as his own could be seen as
the self affirmation of a troubadour:

“‘There never was on earth a knight

So waited on by ladies fair
As once was he, Don Quixote hight,
When first he left his village dear:
Damsels to serve him ran with speed
And princesses to dress his steed,’”
(Cervantes, p. 66).

If these two apparent madmen are, in essence, fictional poets, then we must take
into account the Aristotelian-Nietzschean attributes of madness that are involved in being
a poet & examine these characters as such. They are not madmen in the clinical sense,
they are forgers of their own destiny; they are makers of their own mythology. For they
seemingly have read poetry, and are a unified part of poetry in both epic and dramatic
form, thus, it is safe to say that these characters have, hypothetically, immersed
themselves “beyond” the “doors” of literature & drama where they have learned the
“mysteries” of themselves, life, nature & etc. These fictional characters have made the
Aristotelian breakthrough of what he refers to as the “movement of spirit,” that involves
the moving from theoria (to contemplate), poiein (to create) & lastly praxis (to do).
These movements are essential in the crafting of a dramatic plot, thus, both of these
characters are plot-makers insofar that they have studied well the works of “satirical
rogues” & have forged their life authentically & poetically by these Aristotelian
principles. These characters are “not resurrecting a pragmatic sanction,” as Ezra Pound
affirms of himself, but are “trying to light up pragmatic PROOF,” that “Ideas are true as
they go into action,” (Pound, p. 188). Both Hamlet & Quixote are men of faith.
Yet, what are we to make of the apparent madman who wishes not to create, but
takes a great deal of delight in self-loathing, idleness & hyperconscious activity? Is not
such a character an anxiety bound man of inaction? Such is the character that Fyodor
Dostoevsky introduces to us in his Notes From Underground. “I AM A SICK MAN…I
am a wicked man,” confesses the hyperconscious Underground Man, who seems to shift
between the idealization of beauty (or the sublime) & the continual process of self-
loathing (or self-annihilation) (Dostoevsky, p. 3). The peculiarity of these mental shifts, is
that, conceptually, that is, philosophically, the shifting from idea to idea, or in this case,
from obsession to obsession, is a shifting from what Nietzsche stated above, i.e., from
first seeing the “perpetual vitality” of all that is around him (beautifying) & then
“transforming himself” & speaking from the mouths of others (dramatizing). Here, the
Underground Man is at a crux in the road of becoming a poet & he is extremely
conscious of this fact but chooses to remain at the center of this crux so that he may
penetrate deeper into the consciousness that he is extremely conscious of.
This character gives us an all-too-familiar insight into human psychology when he
claims that, “the direct, lawful, immediate fruit of consciousness is inertia,” & that the
opposition to this all-too-natural law, is best exemplified by those “ingenuous people and
active figures [who] are all active simply because they are dull and narrow-minded,”
(Dostoevsky, p. 17). He is talking of politicians, political activists/intellectuals; he is
speaking of the religious, the dogmatic & the fanatical idealists who advocate this, that or
the other; those that “take the most immediate and secondary causes for the primary ones,
and thus become convinced more quickly and easily than others that they have found an
indisputable basis for their doings,” (Dostoyevsky, p. 17). Bordering on pessimism &
nihilism, Dostoyevsky like Nietzsche & Schopenhauer, forges the preliminaries for
psychoanalysis. It is clear that this parody & mock of consciousness is an outright attack
on reason, morality, ethics & theology; it is also an allusion, that specifically confirms the
disquietude & hyperconscious activity of Hamlet, when he delivers the idea’s
confirmation by stating that:

“conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”
(Act III, scene I, ll. 83-88).

“Nature itself,” writes Arthur Schopenhauer in his tract, The World As Will,
“gives him this knowledge, originally and independently of all reflection, with simple and
direct certainty,” & thus shatters & destroys any preexisting ideologies (moral
reasoning?) that make a claim on being an heir of nature within the mind of man, as
opposed to the “secondary causes” that Dostoevsky’s persona claim them to be
(Schopenhauer, p. 241). It is therefore, no maddening illusion to hear the Underground
Man say that, “the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is…a deliberate
pouring from empty into void,” (Dostoevsky, p. 18). “This disposition is egoism,” writes
Schopenhauer, & is the setting where man’s “inner conflict of the will with itself attains
to such a terrible revelation,” of itself, its condition, its nature & absurdity
(Schopenhauer, p. 242). Author of Dostoevsky, The Stir of Liberation, Joseph Frank,
gives us a clarification in regards to this condition & the response to it that is given by the
Underground Man when he writes that “some mysterious, impersonal power –the laws of
nature– has reduced the individual to complete helplessness; and his only method of
expressing a human reaction to this power is to refuse to submit silently to its despotism,
to protest against its pressure no matter in how ridiculous a fashion,” (Frank, p. 320).
If Cervantes has given us a Don Quixote, Shakespeare a Hamlet, Nietzsche a
Zarathustra, Dostoyevsky his Underground Man, what then, are we to make of these
“genius” forgers of their fates, these men who see the “perpetual vitality” of the things
around them, yet, undergo the curse of being misunderstood by the societies of which
they live? Are we to take them as the author’s persona, as the untimely exemplary heroes
of a nation, or as representative men undergoing the malady of their civilizations?
Another perspective of Ezra Pound offers a clear insight into things. He writes, “that one
measure of a civilization, either of an age or of a single individual, is what that age or
person really wishes to do. A man’s hope,” Pound continues, “measures his civilization.
The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and
time,” (Pound, p. 144). The word hope, I would correlate with the words faith, belief or
desire; the same terminology that is used by Joyce as he circumscribes the nature of
characters as possessed by “accidental manners and humors,” or “whimsicalities” in the
“circumstances” of a given civilization. If we are to look at literature, with its
inexhaustible plots & characters, as one story, from Homer to post-modernist literature;
in short, if we were to read all of the books between the span of some odd 2000 years as
one story, then, we could take an anthropological, psychological, historical assessment of
all that we read & estimate, as Pound has, the “measure of [the] civilization” by which
that text belongs. This idea possessed Nietzsche, Pound, Joyce & many other “modern”
artists & philosophers; it is here where I establish myself among these phantoms.
Imitation of men in action as representation of man in the world, via life, is the
aim of all literature. A few readings of the Poetics will elaborate on the great importance
of literature in the mind & life of men in society. The history of literature is one work,
one canon & the writers of literature are one voice speaking of the same character: Man.
The aim I have often sought as a reader of fiction is diagnosis. By diagnosis I mean the
nature (&/or cause of that particular nature) of man in action: a motley agent of an idea in
this world or another; a representative with whims, follies, perfections & imperfections;
an object of actions & reactions that make the tragic or the comic. By diagnosis, I mean
to identify these little bits & pieces of man’s innate motives toward joy or desire, pity or
terror, be it dynamic or static, moral or immoral. Dramatic conflict is a point of departure
for men to be men, women to be women; a point from which a human being flows &
erupts to the height of their action by means of their passions. Without conflict, boredom
prevails & life would be a cruel joke without meaning.
When reading a work of literature, I find myself less critical of the plot &/or
characterization, thus I’m taken away into the reality of the characters. I am the
characters & the characters are myself. We laugh, sing & dance; we cry, fall & die. They
lead me closer to myself & through them I feel the suspension of vertigo by placing on
their mask of ideas. I suffer their losses & rejoice in their fortunes. Through them I learn
to become myself. The ability to imitate & represent are the primary methods of learning.
Parrots can recite poems & dogs could play dead if they’re trained to do so. Men can act
as wolves & women can personify rain if they’re inspired or possessed by a daemon to
commit these actions. Part of our nature is imitation. This is what I mean by diagnosis in
literature: identifying the nature &/or cause of human action guided by that of emotion &
thought. In this, all people who devout extended amounts of time to reading & deriving at
an interpretation of literature, are, comparatively speaking, putting themselves in harms
way of losing their sanity. This was the case of both Hamlet & Quixote, although the
diagnosis I hereby estimate is that these madmen are not madmen, but men of a refined
faith, hope, desire & intelligence. As the Underground Man tells us about his fantastical
& philosophical obsessions, describing them as “all golden dreams,” (Dostoevsky, p. 20),
and as another Spanish poet, Pedro de Calderon, recapitulates & warns us about the
danger that lay in knowing the nature of these secret dreams, in his Life is a Dream,

“For the greatest crime of man

Is that he ever was born.”
(Act II, scene I, l. 44-45).

Isac Rafael Galvan, 2009

Bibliography

Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulcher, New Directions Publishing Co., 1970.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground, Vintage Books, 1994.

Arthur Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer Selections, Ed. By DeWitt H. Parker, Charles

Scribner’s Sons, 1928.

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Ed. By Edward

Hubler, Signet Classic, 1963.

Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky, The Stir of Liberation, Princeton University Press, 1986.

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 1950.

James Joyce, Critical Writings, Dover Publications, Inc., 1996.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Dover Publications, Inc., 1995.

Aristotle, Aristotle’s Poetics, Introductory Essay by Francis Fergusson, Macmillan &

Company Ltd., 1995.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (I), Stanford University Press, 1997.
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Signet Classic, 1964.

Pedro de Calderon, Life is a Dream, Penguin Publishing Co., 1978.