G.E. Lessing 'blogs' against racism, 1779

Yesterday was Blog Against Racism Day. At T6I, though, the blogging had to wait for today, because yesterday was Kulchur Against Racism Day round here. That is to say, we took the boy to the Schauspiel to see Lessing's Nathan der Weise.

This Nathan is a 'modern' production. Most of the stage floor is a sort of deep pit. A number of bands, each the width of the pit and a couple of metres deep, can rise up, separately or together, to floor level and beyond, or sink back down to the bottom. Mostly they do this singly or in small groups and at a stately pace; but at one traumatic moment, when we learn what happened to Nathan's wife and sons, the bands rise up and down all at once and violently, and the effect is as though the actors are stalking madly upon the waves. Nearly as dominant as the floor is the 8-metre Wailing Wall built of old televisions, which at the climax of the piece moves forward as though to force the actors into the orchestra; several of the screens flicker briefly into life.

This is all no doubt very clever and meaningful, but let's not have it distract us from the story.

(You can read the whole of that story for free at Projekt Gutenberg.de, by the way.)

It's crusader-era Jerusalem, and Saladin has reconquered the holy city from the Franks. He has spared a single Templar, who reminds him strangely of his long-lost brother. The Templar in turn saves the life of Nathan's daughter Recha, pulling her from a burning building. All this Nathan, a wealthy merchant, learns as he returns from a commercial journey.

Nathan and his daughter would both like to express their gratitude to the Templar. The Templar, though, spurns the attentions of these odious Jews.

Meanwhile Saladin finds himself under some, eh, budgetary constraint (as rulers frequently were) and (as rulers frequently did) decides to squeeze some money out of the rich Jew.

The sultan has Nathan come round his place and, claiming to have heard his wisdom praised by all, asks him to answer a question: which is the true faith: Judaism, Christianity or Islam? It's a trick, of course. Saladin hopes that Nathan will put himself into an awkward position, out of which he may then be permitted to buy himself at a high price.

Now Lessing was a son of the manse. He'd have been well aware that there is ancient precedent for wise Jews responding to trick questions from those in power. He has Nathan tell a parable, the famous parable of the ring.

There was once a man who possessed a beautiful ring, a ring whose singular virtue would make its wearer pleasing in the eyes of God and men. The man had received the ring from his father, who had it from his father before him and so on; and each bearer was charged to bequeath it to the most beloved of his sons.

Now the man in question had three sons, and loved them all equally; but he had only one ring. So he had a jeweller make clever replicas, impossible to tell from the original. When he died each son received a ring. But which ring was the genuine article, and which copies? The sons could not decide, so they turned to a wise man for help.

Good question, said the wise man; how on earth should I know which ring is genuine? Indeed, how do we know any are genuine -- maybe your father lost the original ring and had three replicas made. The only thing we can do is this: each of you three must so live your life that your justice and mercy show your ring to be the real one.

Our man Saladin is impressed at this adroit response, and makes Nathan his friend.

As for our Templar, Nathan reasons with him too, and the Templar comes to see past his prejudice. So far past, in fact, that when he finally visits Recha to accept her thanks, he falls madly in love with her. Pity that he can't marry her, she being a Jew and he a Christian knight.

Now it's at this point that the play really takes off on a tangent. It's bit like Magnolia or The Crying Game or for that matter Predator, films you think are about one thing but turn out to be about something very different indeed. But what it's like most of all is, oddly enough, a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. In fact, there would have been nothing at all out of place if, just before the climactic scene in which all is revealed, Little Buttercup had walked onstage to belt out 'Things Are Seldom What They Seem'.

Everybody's happy as the curtain falls. Recha and the Templar still don't get to marry (though for rather different reasons), but apparently people were more spiritual about that sort of thing back then.

My dollar to your doughnut says that, if you pick up a book or article discussing Nathan, you will find it described as 'an impassioned plea for tolerance' or something very close to that. True enough as far as it goes. But it's a bit more than that. It is a quintessential work of the enlightenment. Its message isn't simply 'intolerance isn't nice'. Its message is: intolerance is goddamned stupid. Stop being so goddamned stupid. Lessing puts it more delicately than that, of course.

Our hero is a Jew. Now Jews can be as tribally-minded as anybody else, heaven knows. But as a people they spent an awfully long time living among other, dominant peoples; sometimes tolerated (and even privileged), often mistreated (and even massacred). As a mediaeval Jew, Nathan would no doubt have been subject to many temptations, but the temptation to ruling-caste arrogance would not have been among them.

That's not the case for the two other principal male characters. Saladin has conquered all before him and redeemed the wounded honour of the Muslim east; the Templar, though a disgraced prisoner in Jerusalem, is an aristocrat at home (he bears the name Stauffen, and in Germany it doesn't get much more aristocratic than that). Each is burdened not only by pride but by prejudice; ugly irrational prejudice. It is not so much Nathan's Judaism as his rationalism that wins them both to a better way. Tolerance and respect among people of all races and faiths is a virtue not because it is 'nice' but because it is not, as prejudice is, fucking stupid.

Indeed it is telling that the only character not rescued from prejudice by reason is the one who holds reason in contempt (or, as he would put it, thinks reason all well and good as long as it knows its place). This character is the Patriarch of Jerusalem, that is to say, the Christian archbishop. There's a bit of a spoiler in what comes, so if you would prefer to see or read Nathan with more-or-less innocent eyes, stop reading now.

The Templar learns something about Nathan and Recha, and isn't quite sure how he should react. So he seeks the advice of his reverend father in God, but is canny enough to pose his question as a hypothetical. That question is, what would happen to a Jew who, out of love and pity, rescued a Christian girl and raised her as his own daughter? The Patriarch's answer is: why, he'd be burnt at the stake, of course!

[Interpolated translations my own; apologies in advance for crappy prosody etc.]

Templar:
Wenn aber nun das Kind,
   [But what, then, if this child,]
Erbarmte seiner sich der Jude nicht,
   [had the Jew not taken pity on her,]
Vielleicht im Elend umgekommen wäre?
   [would, perhaps, have died in misery?]

Patriarch:
Tut nichts! der Jude wird verbrannt!
   [So what? The Jew must burn!]
- Denn besser, Es wäre hier im Elend umgekommen,
   [Better the child should have died in misery]
Als daß zu seinem ewigen Verderben
   [than to its eternal damnation]
Es so gerettet ward.
   [be saved.]
- Zudem, was hat Der Jude
   [Besides, what right has the Jew]
Gott denn vorzugreifen?
   [to arrogate God's place?]
Gott Kann, wen er retten will,
   [God can save those whom He will]
schon ohn' ihn retten.
   [well enough without him.]

[...]

Templar:
Das geht Mir nah'! Besonders, da man sagt, er habe
   [It pains me to hear that; especially as they say]
Das Mädchen nicht sowohl in seinem, als
   [he raised the girl not in his own faith]
Vielmehr in keinem Glauben auferzogen,
   [but rather in none,]
Und sie von Gott nicht mehr nicht weniger
  [teaching her of God no more nor less]
Gelehrt, als der Vernunft genügt.
   [than reason demands.]

Patriarch:
Tut nichts! Der Jude wird verbrannt ...
   [So what? The Jew must burn!]
Ja, wär' allein Schon dieserwegen wert,
   [In fact, for this reason alone]
dreimal verbrannt Zu werden!
   [he'd deserve to be three times burnt!]
- Was? ein Kind ohn' allen Glauben Erwachsen lassen?
   [What, let a child grow outside the faith?]
- Wie? die große Pflicht, Zu glauben, ganz und gar ein 
   [What, of the great duty of belief]
Kind nicht lehren?...
   [to teach a child nothing?]

Better a child die than hold the wrong faith, then; better to kill a man who'd teach a child to think for herself. Well, let nobody say that men like the Patriarch can't learn: by the modern era, they'd only take the child away, while sparing the parents' lives.

In the meantime, if you are a racist, then heed the advice of a Palestinian Jew born from the pen of a German Christian, and stop being so fucking stupid.