Like a new Savonarola, an Italian Quixote of
the end of the fifteenth century, he fights against this Modern Age that
began with Machiavelli and that will end comically. He fights against
the rationalism inherited from the eighteenth century. Peace of mind,
reconciliation between reason and faith--this, thanks to the providence
of God, is no longer possible. The world must be as Don Quixote wishes
it to be, and inns must be castles, and he will fight with it and will,
to all appearances, be vanquished, but he will triumph by making himself
ridiculous. And he will triumph by laughing at himself and making
himself the object of his own laughter.
"Reason speaks and feeling bites" said Petrarch; but reason also bites
and bites in the inmost heart. And more light does not make more warmth.
"Light, light, more light!" they tell us that the dying Goethe cried.
No, warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we die of cold and not of darkness.
It is not the night kills, but the frost. We must liberate the enchanted
princess and destroy the stage of Master Peter.[69]
But God! may there not be pedantry too in thinking ourselves the objects
of mockery and in making Don Quixotes of ourselves? Kierkegaard said
that the regenerate (_Opvakte_) desire that the wicked world should mock
at them for the better assurance of their own regeneracy, for the
enjoyment of being able to bemoan the wickedness of the world
(_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, ii.
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