Safai Ozer's Page

Son-Quixotes Are End/Less (*)

On the one hand of the story; a foolish village priest, a very ordinary barber, a pedantic school graduate who thinks he knows everything because of his education, a housekeeper woman against all sorts of changes, a nephew who seeks after his own interests, a horse keeper who is in fact possessive though self-denying from time to time, a village girl who has no specific originality but glorified, and a few dukes and duchesses. Shortly ‘the rabble’ in Nietzsche’s terms, ‘the crowds’ in Rumi’s words which exist in every society. That colourless, odourless, motionless majority...


On the other hand, Don Quixote: A lonely man that defines wandering knighthood as ‘being on the side of the truth and advocating the truth at cost of one’s own life’ and who is half-crazy for some people, and wise for some. On the background, flacks of sheep (May it be sheep-like crowds?) and windmills, - in Don Quixote’s words ‘the giants that should be swept away off the earth’ - at the target of the knight’s attacks. (Do those mills grind just cereals or crush our virtues, souls, beauties?)

Having been defeated at the duel by that quarterly-educated pedantic, Don-Quixote returns his village, ordinary routine, and acquaintances. He returns to wait for death. Cervantes kills him first spiritually by making him say “I’m disguised with all the things I’ve done.” Let us put both Cervantes and Don-Quixote aside and come to Son-Quixotes:

What’s to be a Son-Quixote?

Doubtlessly, it is to be able to advocate with no compensation the principles on the side of the goodness, beauty and the truth against everybody and everything; to be able to get purified from being sheep-like; to be able to take no notice of the calls of the crowds which invite to being ordinarily and which promises a lot of prizes. It is to be able to refuse decisively all the offered gains, to be able to fight virtuous battles even if they have indefinite results. The Son-Quixotes are end/less. Because they are fortunate spirits who have seized eternity. Isn’t Jesus Christ who was walking decisively even when he was carrying the cross on his back a Son-Quixote that defeated mortality? Is it possible to annihilate Hallaj-i Mansur who said “ My God, thy creatures have gathered to kill me in the name of thou; may forgive them!” in spite of tortures lasting for days and nights without abandoning his beliefs. Is it ever probable to mention the mortality of the breath of Bruno that had been burnt to death by the Inquisition who has been yelling for four hundred years :”Difficulties can but make the cravens give up.” ? Is not the voice of Che, the undaunted fighter, reaching your ears echoing from tens of years away: “Death is more than welcome!” ?

Let us leave aside the prophets, the wise men, the fighters with no compensation whose names at least were heard of by most of us and come nowadays: Isn’t even brother Necat, who rambles Skopje streets every night an evidence that proves the end/lessness of Son-Quixotes? Necat is such a man that never tells anyone the reason for his night-watching and only smiles at those who think that he is mad. He is like a spirit beyond the skin - that cannot be seen by staring crowds - which whispers the secrets of prophecy to who can recognise. We know when he hears that we dedicated this exhibition to his name he will get ashamed, grow red and pale, and hide behind his shelf, but again we dedicate this exhibition to the name of that unblemished man Necat Alii and to men of heart, symbols of virtue, waterfalls of belief whose name we even don’t know.

Good that Son-Quixotes are end/less.

* ('Son' means 'the last' in Turkish, i.e. the original language of this manifest)