(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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VIVIAN LISKA
Sancho Pansa, der sich übrigens dessen nie gerühmt hat, gelang es
im Laufe der Jahre, durch Beistellung einer Menge Ritter- und Räuberromane
in den Abend- und Nachtstunden seinen Teufel, dem er
später den Namen Don Quixote gab, derart von sich abzulenken,
daß dieser dann haltlos die verrücktesten Taten aufführte, die aber
mangels eines vorbestimmten Gegenstandes, der eben Sancho Pansa
hätte sein sollen, niemandem schadeten. Sancho Pansa, ein freier
Mann, folgte gleichmütig, vielleicht aus einem gewissen Verantwortlichkeitsgefühl
dem Don Quixote auf seinen Zügen und hatte
davon eine große und nützliche Unterhaltung bis an sein Ende. (GS
II.2:438)
[Without ever boasting of it Sancho Panza succeeded in the course
of years, by supplying a lot of romances of chivalry and adventure for
the evening and night hours, in so diverting from him his demon,
whom he later called Don Quixote, that this demon thereupon
freely performed the maddest exploits, which, however, for the lack
of a preordained object, which Sancho Panza himself was supposed
to have been, did no one any harm. A free man, Sancho Panza philosophically
followed Don Quixote on his crusades, perhaps out of a
sense of responsibility, and thus enjoyed a great and profitable entertainment
to the end of his days. (SW 2:815–16)]
In this story, Don Quixote is Sancho Panza’s own demon. Desiring
to save the world and thus losing any sense of reality, Don Quixote is
then seconded by Sancho Panza, who has decided to trail the crusading
knight. Fearing the knight’s destructive fantasies and follies, he follows
him everywhere and watches over his actions. Thus, he also provides
himself — and we might add us as well — with a “great and edifying
entertainment.” In a letter to Scholem of 11 August 1934 Benjamin
underscores his deep appreciation for Kafka’s Sancho Panza with the following
words: “Sancho Pansas Dasein ist musterhaft, weil es eigentlich
im Nachlesen des eignen, wenn auch närrischen und donquichotesken
besteht” (Sancho Panza’s existence is exemplary, because it consists in
Kafka’s rereading of his own foolish und donquixotic side). 33 Kafka’s
“law” and the perfection of his writing, which Benjamin discovers in
“Sancho Panza,” does not lie in the fantasy world of Don Quixote
riding off into the void — a void resembling Agamben’s — but in his
servant’s vigilant wisdom and his concern for the concrete. In Kafka’s
exegesis of Cervantes’s figures, Sancho Panza reins in his own destructive
demon and lightens the burden of the world by providing it with
wondrous stories about knights and their adventures. In his letter to
Scholem, Benjamin explains why he refrains from addressing the topic
of the law in Kafka’s writings, calling it his “blind spot.” The law that
Benjamin unearths in Kafka’s story is indeed of a very different nature.