The Merry Masquerade Balla
A Story from a Friend’s Diary
ONE DAY, IN . . . , a ball was held to honor a famous woman. Although no one had actually seen this woman, she was reputed to be of exceptional beauty, but also extremely difficult. She was like a will-o’-the-wisp; the more one thinks oneself to be nearing her favor, the farther away from it one finds oneself. And as soon as one believes one possesses it fully, it vanishes completely. Her name, which [277] should be uttered in a respectful tone, is Madame M. . . . .b or, to say the same thing another way, the chambermaid Ph’sc lady. Because she is, as mentioned, invisible, we know of her beauty only by what comes from the mouth of her gossipy maid, and we can call her by no other name.
All the cavaliers gathered at the ball jostled for the honor of dancing with this lovely woman. Her taste wasn’t known, so in an attempt to please her, all kinds of dances were tried out: amiable vainquer, charmant vainquer, passepièd, dance d’amour, princesse burée, courante, rigaudon, gavotte, sarabande, and so on. Menuett and the English dance were regarded as common and not attempted at all. The old cavaliers danced first, being granted this privilege on account of their age. But because the noble art of dancing, like all arts, grows more and more perfect over time, and because it couldn’t possibly have reached its current state of perfection . . . years ago, [278] these men, too old to learn something new, could offer nothing more than all kinds of faux pas and odd caprioles, and they often became confused. They not infrequently stepped out of line, and instead of executing their precious moitié, repeatedly crashed into her chambermaid.
In order to prevent this misfortune from happening again, some wanted to chase the chambermaid out of the room. Others, however, were against this. There were arguments; challenges went back and forth. But these elderly gentlemen were even less suited to dueling than dancing.d Monsieur Py.e insisted that the men dance with ruler, triangle, and compass in hand, measuring every step with mathematical precision.
Monsieur X. . . .f was content to make a circle around the dance floor and [279] claim that he could dance very well without moving from the spot.g He asserted as well that our eyes are prismatic glasses, multiplying one and the same object in various ways.h Monsieur H . . .i cried for sorrow and predicted an imminent fire.j Monsieur L. . . .k gave up on the storied lady and chose the chambermaid for his moitié. So, too, did Monsieur D. . . .l Now the petit maître by the name of S. . . .m came in. They flit like butterflies from one woman to the next, laughed at the stiff comportment of the old fools, and in this way enjoyed their evening very much. [280]
Monsieur S. . . .n had no patience either for the old men’s clumsy earnestness or the frivolous newcomers. He wanted lightness and grace from the one and order and regularity from the other. At first his admonitions made a big impression on the young men and women, but because he had arrived too late, after dissoluteness had already gained the upper hand, he was soon felt to be insufferable and was thrown out of the hall.o
The next to arrive was Monsieur Pl. . . . ,p a man of noble bearing and earnest character. He claimed that it was impossible to win the honored lady’s favor through dancing if one didn’t keep one’s eyes on certain images floating around the hall (which no one other than him could see) and coordinate one’s steps with them. Now everyone believed they, too, could see these miraculous images, and they were delighted by this new discovery. [281] But after the first rush had passed, they began to feel ashamed of their gullibility. “What nonsense!” they all cried. “We don’t see any images. This Monsieur Pl. is either a madman or a fool.”
Now Monsieur Ar.q stepped forward, a man whose exterior was not very promising, but whose intellectual capacities were great. Among other things, he had written a book about the art of dancing,r laying out the rules of that activity, determining all possible errors a priori,s reducing all dances to ten,t and insisting that everyone had to dance according to the rules he had set forth.
After him came Monsieur Z.,u a man of earnest character and great pride. He claimed to depend on nothing, love nothing, hate nothing, and fear nothing. When, as he danced, he felt cramps [282] so painful that he thought he would burst, he pretended to be fine.
Monsieur Pyr.v wanted nothing to do with either the lady or her chambermaid. Rather, he claimed that dancing, as salutary movement, is good for one’s health.
Now it was the young cavaliers’ turn. They danced more tastefully and gracefully than those who had gone before them but with no better results.w The old arguments flared up among them, and, with a few small exceptions, everything remained as it had been. One of the most intelligent of them couldn’t stand this quixotic behavior any longer. He remarked that the honored lady was a child of the imagination whose image could spur a knight to acts of heroism, [283] but which could also, if unchecked by caution, prompt all kinds of excess.x He demonstrated how the illusion came to be and how one could save oneself from the threat it posed. This garnered a great deal of attention. Parties formed. Some stubbornly tried to assert the existence of the woman, which up to now had been taken for granted. Others questioned their assertions.
My friend. . . ,y who was there at the ball, entered into the debate. Not only did he support the theory of the lady’s nonexistence, he also claimed that it was possible to be a good cavalier without believing in such a figment of the imagination. He challenged both parties to defend their claims against his counter-reasoning. When the group asked about the content of his challenge, the masked coward from the anti-lady party, who had seen it first but lacked enough faith in his capacities to accept it, replied, [284] “I don’t know; it is written in an illegible hand.” Some of those men who hadn’t shown much skill at dancing wanted to be done with the whole story. Monsieur . . . left the hall, went into the next room, and spent the rest of the evening with a couple of bottles of champagne in the company of Madame B . . . Monsieur . . . played a game of piquet while enjoying a pipe of the best tobacco. Other upstanding men who had grown tired of this fencing exhibition went home to tend to their affairs.
My friend’s diary breaks off here. I wonder how this strange masquerade ball ended . . .
a [Maimon] I cannot avoid the impression that my friend’s story is meant to be an allegorical representation of the history of philosophy. Thus, in order to spare the reader the effort of speculating, I will provide some annotations, which should help with the interpretation of the allegory. [For a brief interpretive discussion see our introduction.—Editors]
b [Maimon] This means metaphysics.
c [Maimon] Physics.
d [Maimon] Before Aristotle, logic was not a science.
e [Maimon] Pythagoras, whose metaphysics were based on the doctrine of numbers and mathematical figures.
f [Maimon] Xenophanes asserted that the only infinite Being is circular.
g [Maimon] He denied the existence of movement.
h [Maimon] He asserted: Everything is one, despite the appearance of diversity.
i [Maimon] Heraclitus.
j [Maimon] He asserted the destruction of the world through fire.
k [Maimon] Leucippus rejected all metaphysical principles and made material principles into the basis of his philosophy.
l [Maimon] Democritus.
m [Maimon] The sophists.
n [Maimon] Socrates.
o [Maimon] As is well known, he was put to death.
p [Maimon] Plato: an allusion to his theory of forms.
q [Maimon] Aristotle.
r [Maimon] His Organon, in which logic is described as a kind of dancing around with concepts without actually moving from one’s spot.
s [Maimon] All kinds of fallacies.
t [Maimon] The categories.
u [Maimon] Zeno, the founder of the school of Stoics.
v [Maimon] Pyrrho, founder of the school of Skeptics. He claimed that we must search for truth even though we will never attain it with certainty.
w [Maimon] Modern philosophy introduced a better analytical method without making any progress in metaphysics.
x [Maimon] Presumably Kant is meant here.
y [Maimon] Anyone who wants to decipher who this friend might be and what his chief assertion is should be able to do so on his own. In addition, the reader doesn’t have to be an Oedipus to unmask the fellow in the mask. [*The friend, of course, is Maimon and the cowardly fellow in the mask is very likely Maimon’s rival Karl Leonard Reinhold. For a concise, philosophically illuminating account of Maimon’s relations to both of these contmeporaries and others, see Frederick Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy fron Kant to Fichte (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), ch. 10.—Eds.)]