Once--do you remember?--we saw a group of eight or ten youths and one
of them said: “Let’s do something rash!” and the others followed him.
And you and I long for the people to get together and shout: “Let’s
do something rash!” and begin to march. And if any bachelor, any
barber, any curate, any canon or any duke should stop them and say:
“My children, that’s right! I see that you are bursting with heroism
and righteous indignation. I also will go with you. But before we all
go, and I along with you, to do this rash deed, don’t you think that
we ought to agree as to the rashness that we are going to commit?”--if
any of these mandarins should stop them and say that, then they ought
to knock him down on the spot and walk over him, trampling on him, and
that would be a beginning of the heroic rashness. Don’t you think, my
friend, that there are many lonely souls amongst us whose heart craves
for some rashness, something to set it aflame? Go then and see if you
can’t gather them together and form them into a squadron and start us
on the march--for I will go with them and march behind you--to redeem
the sepulchre of Don Quixote, which lies, thank God, we know not where.
The bright and sounding star will tell us.
But--you say in your hours of depression, when your spirit fails
you--may it not be that when we think we are marching forward into
new countries, we are really all the time revolving round the same
spot? In that case the star will rest quietly over our heads and the
sepulchre will be within us. And then the star will fall, but it will
fall in order that it may bury itself in our souls. And our souls will
be turned to light, and when they are all fused together in the bright
and sounding star, the star will mount upwards, brighter still, and it
will change into a sun, a sun of eternal melody, to lighten the sky of
our redeemed country.
Forward then! And take care that no bachelors, barbers, curates,
canons or dukes disguised as Sancho Panzas join the sacred squadron of
crusaders. No matter if they ask you for islands; what you have got
to do is to throw them out directly they ask to be informed of the
itinerary of the march, directly they begin to talk about a program,
directly they whisper to you and ask you, maliciously, to tell them
the whereabouts of the sepulchre. Follow the star! And do like the
Knight--redress the wrong that lies in front of you. Do now what is to
be done now; do here what is to be done here.
Begin the march! Where are we going? The star answers: To the
sepulchre! What are we going to do on the way, as we march? What?
Fight! Fight, and how?
How? If you come across a man who is telling lies, shout out Liar!
in his face, and forward! If you come across a man who is stealing,
shout out Thief! and forward! If you come across a man who is talking
fool-talk to a crowd listening with gaping mouths, shout out Idiots!
and forward! Always forward!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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