Doubt & Hope. Unamuno, Life 6.14
Unamuno
illustrates the great power of doubt and hope together, using the New
Testament and the story of Don Quijote to show how their mutual strife is
an essential part of healthy humanity. Belief
and unbelief: humanity must hold both together, and struggle with
them. Our life is in the struggle.
En
el cap. IX del Evangelio según Marcos, se nos cuenta cómo llevó
uno a Jesús a ver a su hijo preso de un espíritu mudo, que
dondequiera le cogiese le despedazaba, haciéndole echar espumarajos,
crujir de dientes e irse secando, por lo cual quería presentárselo
para que le curara. Y el Maestro, impaciente de aquellos hombres que
no querían sino milagros y señales, exclamó: «¡Oh generación
infiel! ¿hasta cuándo estaré con vosotros? ¿hasta cuándo os
tengo de sufrir? ¡Traédmele!» (v. 19), y se lo trajeron; le vió
el Maestro revolcándose por tierra, preguntó a su padre cuánto
tiempo hacía de aquéllo, contestóle éste que desde que era su
hijo niño, y Jesús le dijo: «Si puedes creer, al que cree todo es
posible» (v. 23). Y entonces el padre del epiléptico o endemoniado
contestó con estas preñadas y eternas palabras: «¡Creo, Señor;
ayuda mi incredulidad!» Πιστεύω,
κύριε, βοήθει τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ μου (v.
23).
¡Creo,
Señor; socorre a mi incredulidad! Esto podrá parecer una
contradicción, pues si cree, si confía, ¿cómo es que pide al
Señor que venga en socorro de su falta de confianza? Y, sin embargo,
esa contradicción es lo que da todo su más hondo valor humano a ese
grito de las entrañas del padre del endemoniado. Su fe es una fe a
base de incertidumbre. Porque cree, es decir, porque quiere creer,
porque necesita que su hijo se cure, pide al Señor que venga en
ayuda de su incredulidad, de su duda de que tal curación pueda
hacerse. Tal es la fe humana; tal fué la heroica fe que Sancho Panza
tuvo en su amo el Caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha, según creo
haberlo mostrado en mi Vida
de Don Quijote y Sancho;
una fe a base de incertidumbre, de duda. Y es que Sancho Panza era
hombre, hombre entero y verdadero, y no era estúpido, pues sólo
siéndolo hubiese creído, sin sombra de duda, en las locuras de su
amo. Que a su vez tampoco creía en ellas de ese modo, pues tampoco,
aunque loco, era estúpido. Era, en el fondo, un desesperado, como en
esa mi susomentada obra creo haber mostrado. Y por ser un heroico
desesperado, el héroe de la desesperación íntima y resignada, por
eso es el eterno dechado de todo hombre cuya alma es un campo de
batalla entre la razón y el deseo inmortal, Nuestro Señor Don
Quijote es el ejemplar del vitalista cuya fe se basa en
incertidumbre, y Sancho lo es del racionalista que duda de su razón.
In
the ninth chapter of the gospel according to Mark, we find the story
of a man who brought his son to Jesus to be healed. The youth was
smitten with a dumb spirit that tore him to pieces whenever it took
him, causing him to go mad, grind his teeth, and froth at the mouth.
Impatient with the men about him who lusted after miracles and signs,
the Master cried out: “O faithless generation! How long shall I
tarry with you? How long shall I have to suffer your presence? Bring
me the boy!” (Mark 9.19). They brought him. The Master saw him
thrashing about on the ground, and asked his father how long he had
been this way. Since childhood, the father answered, and Jesus said
to him: “If you can believe, all things become possible” (Mark
9.23). And then the father of this epileptic, this possessed man,
answered with these eternal words, full of meaning for us: “I
believe, Lord. Help thou mine unbelief!” (Mark 9.23).
This
might seem like a contradiction, for if the man believes—if he has
real confidence—how can he ask the Lord to save him from his lack of belief?
Nevertheless, it is precisely this contradiction that gives such
profound human value to the gut-wrenching cry uttered by the
possessed man's father. His faith is built upon a foundation of
uncertainty. It is because he believes—or rather, because he wants
and needs to believe—that his son is curable, that he asks the Lord
to save him from unbelief, from doubt that such a thing could ever
happen. That is human faith, the same kind of heroic faith that
Sancho Panza had in his master, the knight Don Quijote, from La
Mancha, as I think I have demonstrated in my own Life of Don
Quijote and Sancho (†).
This faith is built upon
uncertainty, on doubt. Sancho Panza was a man, true and potent. He
was no fool: otherwise, if he were just an idiot, he would have
accepted all the wild fantasies of his master without even the shadow
of a doubt. Even Don Quijote was too wise to believe in them so
recklessly, though he was crazy. What
he really was, in his deepest heart, was hopeless, as I think I have
shown in that little book just mentioned. And by virtue of being both
hopeless and heroic, a hero whose character expresses hopelessness
that is intimately personal and resigned to fate, he becomes the eternal type of every man whose soul is a battlefield
between reason and immortal desire. Entering those lists with us, our
lord Don Quijote becomes a portrait of the vitalist whose faith is
founded on uncertainty, and Sancho represents the rationalist who
doubts his own reason.
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(†)
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra wrote the original tale
of Don Quijote and his servant, Sancho Panza: El ingenioso
hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605-1615).
In that story, a modern Spanish landowner of small means imagines
himself a knight errant, and goes on a series of adventures whose
import he takes from late medieval romances, though they are really
just normal events: in one famous episode, he charges a group of
windmills, insisting that they are angry
giants with many hands.
Unamuno took this comic story and rewrote it as a serious
tragedy—Vida de
Don Quijote y Sancho (1914)—with
Don Quijote representing the transformative faith humanity needs to
give its otherwise hopeless and senseless life a vital, and perhaps
eternal, meaning.